A Terry and Ryuuji Fic
by egochan
Summary: For Fickle 'cuz livejournal won't hold it. TerryRyuuji, RyuujiTerry, whatever. Batman Beyond and YGO crossover. Disclaimer: I do not own Batman Beyond or YuGiOh.
1. Chapter 1

Terry knew Ryuuji Otogi as that girly Asian guy in his third hour who wasn't good at math. To Terry's knowledge, Ryuuji also wasn't so hot in the English department, either. The guy didn't talk a whole lot, and yet it hadn't taken him long to develop a following of devoted fangirls. Dana, too, had been swept away. All she ever talked about was how she had helped _Ryuuji_ find the principal's office, how she had helped _Ryuuji_ order lunch, how she thought _Ryuuji_ was the most polite and perfect guy ever, how come _Terry_ wasn't more like _Ryuuji, _how much _Terry_ could learn from _Ryuuji. _Terry had been mature about this for maybe five seconds, then accused Dana of being gay for loving such a girly guy. Dana had simply chalked the comment up to how much Terry stood to improve. And anyway, she didn't love _Ryuuji. _Terry was her boyfriend, and for better or worse she stuck by him. He needed to learn to appreciate her more.

How much would Terry bet that _Ryuuji _would supposedly appreciate her more? The guy was making Terry sick, and they'd never spoken.

"On the bright side, I'm really improving in Japanese class," said Dana over lunch, once again counting the ways existing in the same universe as Ryuuji improved her life. "I mean, I just took the class on a whim when I couldn't get film as literature. Who would have known I would ever need it? I'm so happy I studied. I can really help Ryuuji overcome the language barrier."

Terry grunted in response and wondered why evil didn't typically terrorise the city in the mid-afternoon. Lunch with the Ryuuji fangirls was slowly yet surely killing him. Through some sick twist of fate, it had been determined that his girlfriend's friends would succeed where super-terrorists and criminal masterminds before them had failed. Ryuuji was obviously a major threat to mankind…_specifically _mankind. Terry was helpless.

"Oh, I wish I were taking Japanese right now. The Japanese guys are so cute," Chelsea said enviously. It was debatable how many Japanese people Chelsea had even actually seen before Ryuuji. "But then, body language is universal."

"Chelsea! You are not going to seduce Ryuuji. That's not fair."

"You only say that because you don't have a chance."

"Are you idiots talking about the Japanese kid?" Max butted in, sliding into the seat across from Terry. Terry looked up at her hopefully.

"Yes, Chelsea wants to bag him," Terry explained.

To Terry's immediate dismay, Max's face lit up. "I hear the guy's loaded. He invents games and runs an international gaming corporation. Works with Kaiba Corp on graphics and holograms, which means it's some of the best stuff out there. I'd really like to meet that kid. Care to introduce us, Dana? My Japanese is nonexistent." Terry was looking at her like she'd kicked him. "What? I like games."

That wasn't the point. She was one of them. Terry absolutely couldn't believe it. He'd lost his trusted Max to the overwhelming force of Ryuuji Otogi. What potent force of evil was that guy? There was no escaping him. Not even….

…Not even as Batman.

"His name's Ryuuji Otogi. He recently began attending Hamilton High. Have you heard of him?" Mr. Wayne asked. Several answers came to Terry's mind in an instant. None of them were very professional.

"…Yes," he managed, though he wasn't sure how.

"Well," continued Mr. Wayne, noting Terry's clenched teeth which said more than Terry knew, "as far as his criminal history goes, he's pretty clean. His father used Ryuuji to kidnap a kid named Yuugi Motou a few years ago, but Ryuuji didn't follow through in the end. Their relationship is strained, possibly abusive before his father was committed to a Domino City mental hospital back in Japan. Whenever the old man is transferred, Ryuuji follows and precedes his father's arrival by two to three weeks to put the paperwork in order."

"So the guy's moving his father to Gotham?"

"His father's doctor is moving Mr. Otogi to Gotham," Mr. Wayne corrected him. "The man has a unique case of schizophrenia and is useful for study."

"Where do I come in?"

"Mr. Otogi is scheduled to arrive in Gotham at the end of the week. There is evidence Ryuuji is going to try to kill him."

"What? His own father?"

"Supposedly he's attempted so much before, but pulls out almost immediately after law enforcement catches wind of what he's planning. There's no literal history of him ever trying to hurt his father. It's all suspicion that the police believe comes from his celebrity status and people trying to create stories."

"You've got to be kidding."

Wayne gave Terry a look that reminded him they'd had this discussion before. Bruce Wayne did not kid.

"But still," said Terry, "This sissy little Japanese kid who hardly speaks English and can't add is masterminding ways to off a crazy old man? I can't see him masterminding anything, really, unless it's a gravity defying hairstyle."

"Yes, I mean the same Ryuuji Otogi. For one, he posses a greater spoken English vocabulary than you do. He held the world record time for solving a Rubik's cube until last year and has extraordinary skills with just about any puzzle he's given-verbal, spatial, reasoning, logic, what have you-so he can most assuredly add. In fact, he's already graduated."

"So he's supposed to be in college?" Terry asked, pretending it wasn't a big deal. "How did he get into Hamilton?"

"Actually, he graduated Tokyo University last year in the top of his class-if you could call the group he happened to graduate with his class. As for how he got into Hamilton High, he purposely mistranslated his academic records. The screening process for Hamilton is not as sophisticated as you would like to believe. It's only a city high school."

Terry didn't think he could stand it much longer. Who the hell was Ryuuji Otogi really, and why was he so goddamn everywhere so goddamn all the time? This wasn't the same guy Dana had to coach for three days how to pronounce McGinnis. It had to be a mistake, but even he knew that while Bruce Wayne was old, he had never had a senior moment about anything.

Right then, Terry wanted sorely to punch Ryuuji in the face. He didn't know how, he just felt the overwhelming urge.

"What's my job in all of this?" asked Terry reluctantly. He knew he was going to hate the answer.

"You're going to follow Ryuuji, find out about him and whatever kind of persona he's assumed in Gotham. He's not as ignorant as he acts, he simply acts. In Japan he's known for being an enigmatic figure, very flashy and eccentric but virtually unknown. It would help if you could clear up what sort of person he is, what he's capable of. How far he's willing to put on his charade."

Terry had been right. He really hated the answer. "Why am I doing this now and not three weeks ago when he first got here?"

"Ryuuji doesn't start planning the assassination attempts until a few days before so that they are harder to track. If something's been established for weeks, it's easier to trace. Spontaneity is harder to follow."

"Great," Terry groaned. He'd never been very good with the undercover bit of investigations. On the bright side, at least he wasn't pretending to be a kid selling pizzas. That had blown up in his face. He was, however, going to have to pretend to actually want to hang around with Ryuuji. If Terry could maintain that for longer than ten minutes, he was going pack his bags and move to Hollywood. Crime fighting be damned.

"Wear a communicator as well. I don't trust you to read Ryuuji Otogi impartially."

Terry's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why don't you trust me?"

Mr. Wayne smiled, which was never boded well for Terry. It meant he was about to say something that made Terry look like an idiot. "He's fooled you so far, hasn't he?"

Terry frowned and, appropriately, felt like an idiot. This was totally unschway.

oooooooooooooooooooo

"I'm so happy you want to talk to Ryuuji, Terry. I've told him so much about you."

"You've told me plenty about him, too," Terry ceded through nearly clenched teeth. He wondered if Ryuuji hated him just as much as he hated Ryuuji. He would, if Dana told him half as much as she told Terry. "And anyway, it was Max's idea."

Max grinned. "Meeting one of the most famous names in international gaming? Hell yes."

Arranging to meet Ryuuji Otogi had not been difficult at all. In fact, Terry had hardly needed to ask, seeing that Dana and half the Japanese class were itching to introduce Ryuuji to everyone.

"I'm surprised you and Ryuuj have never talked, Terry. You sit right by to him in third hour."

"It just doesn't come up," Terry partially lied. He made sure it never came up.

"Well, I'm sure you'll have something to talk about now. You just needed to be introduced," said Dana, who was typically optimistic as long as it didn't involve Terry running late for a movie or dinner. She turned to Ryuuji who had just entered Cheesy Dan's. After a few sentences in Japanese where Terry only recognised his and Max's names, Ryuuji was sitting down and smiling across the table.

"Hello. It is nice to meet you," Ryuuji said in a thick accent Terry had trouble believing was contrived. Max immediately jumped into conversation about games, gaming retail, and virtual reality. Ryuuji needed help every so often to keep up with Max's lightening-fast English jargon and quips, but was otherwise perfectly relaxed and conversational. He seemed like a nice guy who half understood English. Terry had to blink and look twice to find any proof that this wasn't the actual Ryuuji. Maybe Ryuuji Otogi was some insanely popular name in Japan and Mr. Wayne had gotten it wrong.

For obvious reasons, Terry couldn't convince himself Mr. Wayne had gotten anything wrong, no matter how much he wanted to. Terry made some comment about how, sure, dice were great, and watched the way Ryuuji sipped a straw. It was maybe more than a little girly, Terry thought. Thirty minutes later, his opinion of Ryuuji had changed from overly effeminate to flaming homosexual. He excused himself and went to the bathroom.

"He's _gay_," said Terry in horror. "Did you see that?"

Somehow, Mr. Wayne made the act of rolling his eyes audible. "Terry, you aren't suppose to use this link to complain to me about the suspect."

"What is up with girls and the gay guys?"

There was no answer. Mr. Wayne was ignoring him.

"I'm talking to you. How do I get information out of a gay guy?"

There was silence. Then, "Tell him he has nice hair. He clearly spends a lot of time on it. Trust me, Terry, you need the advice."

He could hear the old man chuckle evilly. "What?" Terry demanded. "You think you're clever? That is so not funny."

This time Mr. Wayne was entirely gone. Terry heard the fuzz as the line disconnected. Damn the one way option on the communicator. "I know you can hear me," Terry said. It was useless, but he felt better saying it.

"Ryuuji asked if you're feeling all right. You were in the bathroom a long time," said Dana when Terry returned to the table.

"I'm fine," Terry lied. Ryuuji looked at him suspiciously. For a second, Terry thought maybe Ryuuji had somehow figured everything out. Then, he noticed the investigative looked was more medically evaluating than threatening. _So what _if Terry was not a great liar under duress? He liked to believe it was a good thing. The fact that Ryuuji was concerned didn't make him comfortable, because, goddamn it, it was _Ryuuji. _

Terry spent the rest of the evening trying not to look across the table and nearly bolted when Mr. Wayne called him to leave. Dana, of course, was irritated Terry had to go from such a promising get together, but Terry just couldn't ignore old Mr. Wayne, could he? What if he had a stroke or something?

Amidst Dana's irritated explanation to Ryuuji, and Max's inquiring eyebrows with the you'll-tell-me-all-about-it-later grin, Terry bolted, for once thrilled he was about to be shot at in a downtown bank robbery. It beat the alternative.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooo

"Other than your, and I emphasize, _extremely biased _and _irrelevant _presumption on the sexual identity Ryuuji Otogi has adopted, last night was worthless."

Terry had been chastised by Mr. Wayne for an hour after rescuing the holdings of the Gotham City Bank from a highly organised group of Jokers with machine guns. Apparently the financial security of Gotham's middle class paled in comparison with Terry's deficient skills of investigation.

"Well, I kind of had no idea what I trying to get out of him. Did you want me to jump into a conversation about Dungeon Dice Monsters with a brilliant ice breaker like, 'So, I hear your father is mentally unstable and you want him dead. Also, how are dice cool? Care to explain either of those things to me?' "

"That would have been more efficient than spending twenty minutes complaining to me about your fear of homosexuals. And it's Dragons, Dice, and Dungeons."

"Actually, it's marketed both ways."

Both Batmans stared off silently. Mr. Wayne, the ever professional of the two, switched quickly back to business.

"I want you here tomorrow morning, eight thirty. We're going to try again."

"I don't have class tomorrow. I'm never going to see Ryuuji."

"People don't cease to exist when you're not in class with them, Terry," said Mr. Wayne, turning to the giant computer he used to research suspects and evidence. There was a file with Ryuuji's name on it, the English after the Japanese. Terry thought of this as rather pretentious of Mr. Wayne. "He's giving a presentation about Kaiba Corp's advances in reality simulation technology to the board at Wayne-Powers. It's part of a trade off with Kaiba Corp that he gives these presentations, and he's very good."

"Really. You would wonder how the inability to speak the English language is overcome," said Terry bitterly, looking at the console image of Ryuuji smiling next to a slide show presentation with a giant KC logo on the middle. Interestingly, he looked like the exact same Ryuuji, but that may have been because Terry's only memories of Ryuuji were the guy smiling and trying optimistically to keep up with Max.

Mr. Wayne was still talking, spouting details about the two companies and how they operated. Terry's emotions finally caught on again with, "I offered to have my personal assistant drive him around tomorrow. He was thrilled. Say's you're both friends."

Terry's mouth hung open at that friends part.

"You better wear something nice," Mr. Wayne added as Terry kept staring transfixed at the screen and gaping. "And smile. God forbid you make the company look bad."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooo

With nice clothes provided by Mr. Wayne, the only thing up to Terry was smiling. He wasn't sure how he managed it, except he kept telling himself that Ryuuji Otogi was not that bad. Ryuuji was bad, certainly, since he wanted to kill his father for knocking him around a few times and making him a spoiled, genius brat. But, it was immature to mainly hate someone just because your girlfriend didn't shut up about them. There were better reasons. Terry would find them.

"Good morning and welcome to the Wayne-mobile, guaranteed to get you anywhere you need to be, especially if that happens to be the Wayne-Powers' Tower in the next twenty minutes," said Terry brightly. Ryuuji looked mildly confused, but was smiling. Terry wanted to shoot himself.

"A good car," said Ryuuji as Terry took his place behind the wheel. Terry now wanted to shake him until he spoke more than simple, five word, minimal verb sentences in English. Instead, he did his damn job and lied to himself that Ryuuji didn't speak English and needed to be treated appropriately.

"So, how do you like Gotham?" Terry ventured, hoping Ryuuji wasn't pretending the be as bad at listening to English as he seemed to speak it. "I mean," he felt like a moron playing along, "Gotham…it's good? Yes? How you feel about city?" Terry gave up. "Slag it. How much English do you actually speak?"

Ryuuji was laughing at him. It reminded him of Mr. Wayne's laugh; low, sadistic, and much better informed. He looked back in the rear view mirror to see that Ryuuji was still grinning.

"I'm not talking like an idiot on purpose," Terry explained. He sighed hopelessly. "Do you know what I'm saying?"

"I like Gotham fine," said Ryuuji finally. Something about the choice of works caused Terry too look up for a second from the road. It didn't seem right. Ryuuji noticed the look and leaned forward confidentially.

"Shhh. Don't tell anyone, but I speak English," Ryuuji confessed in a mockingly secretive whisper, only Terry hardly heard him because he'd nearly driven off into the side of the road. Ryuuji was suddenly right behind him in his left ear. Terry was not a fan of close, furtive whispers without warning.

"What?" Terry asked, moving his head to the other end of the headrest. Ryuuji breathing on his neck was discomforting. He wondered if people spoke two inches from each other's faces in Japan frequently. And if so, what the hell and why? "When did you learn English?" he added on quickly, trying to act as if it was Ryuuji's revelation that had startled him, not Ryuui's stealthy, over-Terry's-shoulder talking.

"Wow, I didn't think you'd take it so dramatically," Ryuuji observed with another laugh. "I should buckle up next time. I suppose I ought to warn you now that I speak Japanese and Mandarin Chinese as well. Don't let it…uh…startle you. Eyes on the road, okay?"

"Why did you pretend not to speak English?" Terry asked, not sure if he was asking too soon or blowing his cover or anything at all because he wasn't thinking straight anymore. Nearly getting himself into a life altering car accident had that effect. He'd nearly veered into three lanes of high-speed traffic.

"Girls like it," said Ryuuii simply, sitting back again with a nonchalance that showed just how much he thought about these girls and their ability to act independently of what he presumed was a part of their essential nature. Terry nodded. He had to give Ryuuji that to an extent. It was true at least for Dana. Still, he'd believe Ryuuji more if he didn't also believe Ryuuji to be gay.

"You serious?" he scolded good-naturedly enough. "Don't you think the hair and the…urm, makeup…are enough for them?"

"No. Of course not.," sneered Ryuuji , carrying on the air of nonchalance that was now starting to personally insult Terry. "People are much nicer and informative when they feel inclined to help you. The best way to become acquainted with a new city is to convince the people there that they want to show you the ins and outs of it."

"Well, you certainly think a lot of other people," said Terry, not without sarcasm. Ryuuji was pleased.

"Are you angry?" Ryuuji asked. He leaned forward intently, as though completely taken with the idea. "Nice guy Mr. Terry McGinnis, friend to all and reachable after school by none but the enigmatic Mr. Bruce Wayne, can possibly display hostility towards another human being?"

Terry furrowed his brow in irritation. "I'm just saying you sound a little…cold-blooded." Terry couldn't think of a better term for it.

"No. Of course not. Never," said Ryuuji brusquely. He dismissed Terry's words and his own previous behaviour with a flourish of his hand. "I am not cold. I didn't mean to sound cold. I'm very warm. Bubbling, actually. I'm just very self-centered. I say inappropriate things. Disregard them."

Terry was looking at the road like it was sounding ridiculous and he didn't believe it. He let it know with an inquiring _huh_. Ryuuji continued, speaking rapidly and leaving no doubt that he was perfectly competent in English and in fact could take up the profession of auctioneer if the whole game inventor thing ever fell through. "Let's start this conversation over. Nice car. I like Gotham fine. Shhh. Don't tell anyone, but I speak English. Wow, I didn't think you'd take it so dramatically. I should buckle up next time. I suppose I ought to warn you now that I speak Japanese and Mandarin Chinese as well. Don't let it startle you. …Now you ask me why did I pretend not to speak English."

Terry sighed. Ryuuji's memory was astounding and, well, totally useless right now. "Forget I asked."

Ryuuji ignored him. "The answer anyway is that I felt like it. I wanted to. I'm selfish," Ryuuji explained. "I don't like not knowing things. I don't like a lot of people knowing how much I don't know. I pretend not to know anything. I over-think. I can't help it. I'm really just egocentric. I'm eccentric. I'm just running my mouth now and all of my sentences have begun with I. Sorry…and that one's an understood I. Pick the excuse you like better from all of that."

Was Ryuuji joking? Terry was beginning to wonder just how neurotic a person had to become until they were committed. He wondered what Ryuuji's father was like. "Are you okay?" he asked tentatively. If this brought another ramble, he was going to steer the two of them into the harbour. The trip had picked a bad time to place them on a bridge.

"I'm fine," Ryuuji said. He clamed up for the next five minutes until they reached the Wayne-Powers's building. "Thank you for driving," Ryuuji said and went inside. Terry immediately called Mr. Wayne.

"What the hell was _that_?"

Mr. Wayne sighed. He had anticipated this. "Most people open with a hello."

"Don't tell me you didn't hear it. The guy's a basket case," Terry said. "The guy is raving mad. He's got to be, because I don't think I've ever used the phrase 'raving mad' in my entire life until right now."

Mr. Wayne didn't say anything for a moment. Terry assumed that if they had been talking face to face right now, the old man would have given him a look and turned to think. Lacking the visual component, however, this was not as effective as it typically could be in shutting Terry up for a few minutes.

"Hey. Are you listening to me?"

"Deal with it, Terry. Not all people are easy to investigate. It's probably an elaborate ruse to throw you off. That, or he is sincerely distressed when people refer to him as cold."

"Fine," said Terry bitterly. "Call me when your meeting is over." He hung up.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooo

An hour later, Ryuuji was back and beaming. He seemed happy with the results of his presentation. Terry wondered if he was going to talk.

"Good, you're already here," Ryuuji cheered as he approached the car. "Mr. Wayne doesn't pay you nearly enough."

A group of people from the meeting were taking lunch at Don's, a French restaurant Terry had only experienced the inside of through travel brochures and movies. Some famous chef ran the restaurant and made special dishes, so Terry could never afford it. The place was for celebrities and wealthy Wayne-Powers board members.

"Be back in an hour and half," Ryuuji instructed. Unfortunately for Terry, Mr. Wayne had insisted that Terry never leave. Instead, he nodded and agreed, but when Ryuuji was gone he stayed right where he was parked. At least it wasn't oppressively hot outside.

Mr. Wayne had arranged that the group sit at a table near the window where Terry could view the lunch. Feeling sneaky and impressive, Terry slipped on the time honoured pair of sunglasses needed to stare at people without them knowing. He assumed a non-threatening position, reclining back in his seat as if trying to catch some sleep. This type of spying was much preferable to close interaction with a subject. The fastest way to blow your cover was to open your mouth and not pay attention to what came out.

Terry smiled when he saw Mr. Wayne had somehow convinced Ryuuji to sit right at the window. He stopped smiling and closed his eyes when Ryuuj looked out and found him. Then, he remembered Ryuuji couldn't see his eyes and felt like he'd just won gold in the biggest idiot alive contest.

Muttering to himself, Terry grabbed the newspaper he never read but had brought from home, and pretended to be highly occupied with the front page. He tried to make the transition from falsely reading to falsely sleeping look totally not false just in case anyone was watching. Maybe it would be useful to sign up for the dramatic arts next term. So much of being Batman required acting. It was almost embarrassing to Terry's masculine side that could not see the badassery in proficient acting skills.

"Terry, you there?"

Terry grunted and tried to remember where he'd put that communicator. Sure, it wasn't a convenient time for Max to call, but it was more interesting than pretending to be asleep.

"Yeah. I'm busy," he said at last. How the hell did the communicator get lodged between the cushions of the navigator seat? "Can this wait?"

"Dana went to brunch three hours ago." Clearly it couldn't wait.

"She's invited to eat whenever she wants." said Terry lightly, even though his stomach had suddenly dropped onto his kidneys.

"Of course she is, but where the hell were you? You totally blipped her off."

Terry couldn't believe it. And he hated the expression blipped off. "I thought I cancelled."

"You must've forgot."

"Slag it. Where is she?"

"Where ever she is, she's probably complaining about you."

Terry knew that. "How mad is she?"

"She just called me shouting, and she scared me enough that I'm sure as hell not running out to console her. You are in a serious bind, my friend."

"Well, I'm really busy right now. Tell her…" Terry thought frantically. "Tell her I'm spending the day with Ryuuji Otogi. Something came up. She'll forgive me if it has to do with Ryuuji."

"She'd saint you if it had to do with Ryuuji. Are you lying?" Max asked suspiciously. Terry didn't usually come up with great excuses. That was her job.

"Ironically, I'm not lying."

"Really? I thought you didn't like the guy."

"I don't."

"Then why blip off Dana?"

"It's Wayne-related." This was Terry's equivalent to something being complicated.

"You better tell me all about that later."

"Sure," Terry lied. He trusted Max, but he couldn't tell her everything. The Otogi Case-yes, Batman didn't typically file cases under more interesting names than that-was something she didn't need to know about unless absolutely necessary. She liked the guy too much to have Terry give her the truth, that he was running surveillance on a potential murderer.

After Max had hung up, Terry placed the handset back where he'd found it. He looked back up at the luncheon and attempted to focus, but he only thought of Dana. Two weeks earlier, Dana had broken up with him. Terry had only recently been able to patch things up. Now, he'd forgotten brunch. Who the hell invented brunch? Terry had enough trouble keeping up with three meals in a day.

Ryuuji was talking now, bragging by the looks of it, to the assemblage. Possibly more confounding than the existence of brunch was that guy's stream-of-consciousness rambling. From what Terry knew of the Joker, he couldn't help but connect Ryuuji. Maybe it was Ryuuji's flamboyant nature. Maybe it was that he ran a company called Black Clown and his father was dressed like a clown in his mug shot. Maybe it was the inability to shut up. Terry had no way of knowing exactly, but suspected it had something to do with all three.

Of course, then there was the fact that Ryuuji hadn't really spoken to Terry since the ramble. He certainly hadn't spoken to Terry in the same straightforward, peculiar manner. Terry frowned and adjusted the sunglasses. Ryuuji was still talking to the table, gesticulating in a frenzy though Terry couldn't guess what he was so excited about. Ryuuji was impossible to know exactly. How did Mr. Wayne expect him to get in? Terry tried to pretend he was Bruce Wayne and asked himself, "what would Batman do?" He then realised he had no idea.

"Slag it," he muttered and went back to trying to read Ryuuji's lips instead.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooo

"You were parked out here the entire time?" Ryuuji asked, sounding thrilled. The lunch had ended twenty minutes early, and Ryuuji did not have to worry about waiting for Terry to show up. "Mr. Wayne really doesn't pay you enough." Terry had no idea if Ryuuji even knew how much Terry was paid.

"I don't have anywhere else to be today," Terry lied. He tried to guess how many times he'd done that today. Ironically, the only time someone hadn't believe him was when he'd been telling the truth.

"Really, what about Dana?"

"She's used to not having me around a whole lot," said Terry. Did that sound cool and detached enough? Terry would kill himself if he ever sounded whiny. "Anywhere in particular you want to go now?" he asked, changing the subject. Even though Dana like to talk about Ryuuji with Terry, Terry didn't feel easy talking about Dana with Ryuuji. That Ryuuji was lying to Dana and playing her naturally helpful instincts against her may have been the reason. Talking about her with Ryuuji made Terry feel like a conspirator.

"Then I'm to assume you forgot about brunch?" asked Ryuuji. He'd never said where he wanted to go, so Terry had made the executive decision to drive them in the direction of Ryuuji's apartment.

"H-how did you know about brunch?" Terry was horrified. Had everyone remembered except him? And why did Dana tell Ryuuji about her plans with Terry anyway?

"Well, obviously your girlfriend told me. I thought you might catch up with her while I was doing my presentation, or during lunch. I even invited you to leave."

"Oh." Terry wasn't sure what else he could say.

"Sabotaging your relationship to chauffeur someone you don't like. Wow. Like I said, Wayne doesn't pay you nearly enough."

Terry would have said oh again, except he'd already used that. He wondered if he should refute Ryuuji's claim that Terry didn't like him, but it was mostly true. Terry had no reasons to support liking Ryuuji, either.

"Dana won't take it so badly if I tell her it was you," said Terry. "She likes you."

Ryuuji smirked. Knowing that Dana adored him was a joke. It was all Terry could do not to turn around and hit him. Ryuuji seemed awfully please with himself. Terry wanted to tell him something, anything that would crush him a moment and force him to realise he was basically evil and perfectly suitable for Gotham. He felt saying so much would be performing his civic duty in the utmost. Wasn't it proper to invite citizens who could best assimilate to Gotham appropriately?

"My apartment? Amazing. You're a mind reader. I needed to change into something less professional." Terry didn't know how skin tight, bizarrely coloured, and awfully too revealing clothing was professional unless your profession was prostitution, but whatever. It wasn't like Terry had stumbled into too many corporate board rooms recently. "Reverse psychology wouldn't cause you to leave if I were to ask you to wait here, would it? Wait here. I'll only be a moment."

When Ryuuji came back, Terry was astonished. The fact that he'd even noticed a change in another man's clothes was one thing. He'd never excepted Ryuuji owned anything so…well, maybe tame was the correct word. Or was old man Wayne-esque more appropriate? He almost beat Terry on the formality of it all. Terry didn't believe he'd ever seen someone his own age in the classic Gotham business tycoon suit. Ryuuji had it , though, and wore it surprisingly well. The wide trousers, long suit jacket, rectangular neckline on the pale green vest, and even a skin sucking turtle neck underneath because ties were not as in fashion as they had once been. With a careful eye to colour and composition, the outfit had been fixed with blocks of dark green and shiny silver rectangular fastenings fitting neatly inside of meticulously arranged parallel lines. Unlike most suits, however, the embellishment was fashionably understated, causing Ryuuji to look more like he'd raided the Wayne closet of Wayne-Powers professional attire. Also, he likely had the narrowest shoulders of any executive in the country.

Terry couldn't help thinking, wasn't what Ryuuji wearing right then what people typically wore to business meetings? Green and black: The simplicity of it was entirely Gotham professional. How much it match Ryuuji's natural features spoke quietly of an expensive custom tailoring.

"I half expected you to come out in buckles and chains," said Terry as Ryuuji straightened the end of the jacket he was sitting on. Ryuuji smiled sheepishly, and Terry was awed to realise the only thing that could embarrass Ryuuji was his clothing. Holy slag.

"Yes. Domino has a history of bad fashion," confessed Ryuuji, as if Domino were a relative no-one ever spoke much of on purpose. "Sort of bondage oriented, I'd think. And too much leather. Of course, on some people the Gotham fashion just looks baggy and oversized."

"I suppose so," Terry said, unconsciously straightening his tie. There was virtually no way to mess up a tie with his suit, but Terry couldn't accept that.

"I don't mean you, of course," said Ryuuji. Terry had known that. "You fit the fashion here very well."

"As weird as it sounds, you do to," Terry complimented back because it was polite. It was hard to think of Ryuuji as evil when he was dressed like Mr. Wayne. If he had dressed like Powers, then sure, bring on the evil. But no; flashy, over the top Ryuuji dressed respectably…when he wasn't doing anything where he had to dress respectably. What the hell?

"I'm giving this suit a test run. I plan on staying in Gotham for a few years, so I've got to alter my appearance and not look so off the boat. Ever realise how certain people from certain cities dress differently? Metropolis is very blue this year."

"Are you starting from the top and working down?" Terry asked bewilderedly. "People don't usually wear things like that around town."

"I know. We're going to meet my father at the airport."

Terry's heart rate immediately skyrocketed. Ryuuji's father was arriving in Gotham today? Mr. Wayne had said the end of the week. What was going on?

"Your…father?" Terry asked, feigning ignorance.

"Yes. You'll like him. He's not very fond of me, either."

Terry felt like a jerk. Was it that Ryuuji was dressed in normal, non-threatening clothing? Or was it that Terry was the sort of person who thought it was perfectly all right to despise a person until that person became aware of it, thus forcing Terry to try and prove he was better than that when he really wasn't? Either way, the words hit home. Terry felt like a jerk.

"I don't mean to sound so harsh," Ryuuji explained. "I'm sure we would've gotten along very well under different circumstances."

Terry couldn't tell if Ryuuji was talking about his relationship with his father or Terry. He hoped not the latter. Of course, it would have been unfair if Ryuuji had compared Terry's disfavour of him and his father's abusive behaviour. The two weren't even close.

"It's no big deal," Terry said with a shrug. It answered both speculations well enough.

"Of course," Ryuuji agreed. He was looking in the rear view mirror at Terry, in a sense accusing Terry of lying with a steady look. Terry was unsure whether he himself were lying or not. His father had never disliked him. He had never been wealthy or abnormally intelligent. He could hardly pretend to know what a big deal meant to Ryuuji.

The airport was on the other side of Gotham, a good hour and a half away. Ryuuji remained silent the entire drive. He looked out the window inquiringly at some things remotely Gothamian, but he never asked. Terry felt worse. Sometimes, being run by his emotions did not fair so well as Batman. He wished to be more like Mr. Wayne just a little bit, enough to take things as they were and not litter them with irrelevant personal significance and feelings. However, he also wished not to turn into Mr. Wayne with no real existence outside Batman. Ace was a good dog, but Terry didn't want the sole comfort of his old age being a mutt hound and a bunch of relics in the cave basement.

"Here we are," Terry said brightly. "Gotham Airport. I'll go with you if you don't mind. They don't like people hanging around the parking lot." And with that Terry successfully persuaded Ryuuji to let his chauffer accompany him inside. It made him feel a little more Batman-like for the first time that day.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo

Gotham Airport was beautiful as far as airports went. Not many places in Gotham were so white and clean outside the hospitals, and the building design itself was to blame for it The majority of the outer walls were entirely taken up by windows, encompassing the innards of the building in a giant, glittering cube. The airport, which had a big reputation and didn't carry a single budget airline, was one of the city's better known locations and famous from movies that had included the airport in various scenes. It was bigger than life inside and outside, wit the international terminal being familiar to half the world due to a popular music video that had been filmed there a few years before.

Terry had never seen the airport in person before. When Batman duties called him out of the country, he took a corporate jet with Mr. Wayne from a private airstrip outside the city. Any other trips he's made had been in the older airport nearer to the city which catered more to budget airlines and regional flights. The first thought that struck him when inside was how bizarre it was. Outside, the weather was hot and sunny. Inside, while still sunny, was nearly freezing. Like groceries and banks, airports, it seemed, liked to keep the cool air cranked.

"You've never been here, have you?" Ryuuji asked. He was silently laughing at Terry, who grunted and stopped looking around immediately. Did it really show?

"My father is going to be at terminal A2 in twenty minutes. Do you need to use the restroom or anything? You've been in the car all day."

Terry suspected Ryuuji was trying to get rid of him, but it was going to take more than that to fool Batman. "No thanks. I'm fine. What's your father look like?" Terry's mind settled on the clown mug shot.

"You'll know him when you see him. He's basically hideous."

The clown hadn't looked that bad. Terry sensed some animosity here. He stared at Ryuuji for s few seconds, trying to evaluate if at that moment of waiting to meet his father, Ryuuji looked like someone who wanted to kill the man. Ryuuji, for his part, hadn't visibly changed in the slightest.

"What?" Ryuuji asked, catching Terry staring. "Is there something in my hair?"

Why when you stared at someone did they always ask about their hair?

"I was wondering how it stayed up."

Why did Terry always then pretend it _had _been the hair?

"Oh," said Ryuuji, the side of his mouth turning up ever so slightly in amusement. He was very proud of his-what had Terry called it before?-gravity defying hairstyle. "It's a Domino City secret. Very hush-hush. I'll tell you later when no-one's listening."

"Who's listening?" Terry asked. He found an empty bench across from the terminal exit and sat down. Ryuuji did likewise, sitting next to him.

"There are people spying on me," said Ryuuji confidentially.

Terry put on his best you-have-got-to-be-kidding look. He also knew for a fact that he himself was spying on Ryuuji. Go figure.

"I don't mean to sound paranoid," Ryuuji quickly explained. "I'm wealthy and come from the highly competitive gaming industry of Domino City. There, it's natural to assume you're being watched. Everyone plays games. They can't turn it off."

"But how are you so sure that you're being spied on?"

"I always am. I also believe the car you have been driving me in is bugged. You may not know it, I may not be right, but I suspect it anyway."

Terry tried to decipher Ryuuji's actions and speech to see if he were lying or not. Check the eyes. Check the inflection. Was Ryuuji going to ramble again? He sounded ready. Luckily, Ryuuji's cell phone chose that moment to ring. The tone was Mozart. How did Terry know that?

"I have to take this," Ryuuji said. Terry didn't know how he was going to follow Ryuuji if he walked away to talk. Ryuuji, however, stayed. He began talking rapidly in Not-English. The words cut into Terry's ears sharply, causing him to wonder if the same Ryuuji who rambled in fluid English could make such irritating sounds as whatever language he was speaking right then. A few minutes later, the speaker in his ear buzzed to life and he could hear Mr. Wayne. For a second, he forgot where the voice was coming from.

"Terry, stop Ryuuji," the voice demanded. Terry looked at Ryuuji who was still chatting away innocently enough on the phone. "Don't let him leave."

Sure enough, Ryuuji was making as if to stand. Bewildered, Terry simply said, "Hey wait." Ryuuji looked at him. Was Ryuuji wearing the suit as a signal? Did Mr. Wayne mean don't let Ryuuji stand or walk out of his sight? Was Ryuuji talking with his choice assassin right then? Why had Terry never learned a language besides English?

"I was just going to stretch my legs. I've been sitting all day." Having just been pulled away from speaking Not-English, Ryuuji's pronunciation was slightly off. It was the first time Terry ever heard Ryuuji speak with a genuine accent.

"I'm sorry," Terry apologised, more to himself than Ryuuji. He wasn't a good enough Batman, was he, to think of a way to stop Ryuuji for longer than two seconds. WWWD-What Would Wayne Do-flashed across his mind. Mr. Wayne had never told Terry how to control suspects outside the Batsuit. Supposedly it came as a natural ability, some interpersonal insight. The only insight Terry had was that Ryuuji was gay. So, he reached out and grabbed Ryuuji by the wrist, forcing him back into the bench roughly to kiss him.

What was Terry's premise that Ryuuji was gay again? The way he sipped a straw, was it? Slag it. Slag it all to wherever things went when they were slagged.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooo

Ryuuji's father was honestly the ugliest creature Terry had ever seen. It took a drastic change of perspective to even think of him as human. The elephant man came to mind. So did a Phantom of the Opera way more hideous than anything the stage had ever been able to cook up. There was nearly no way to describe it. Age made people less beautiful, and the old man had seemed to take that as a challenge by being impossibly ugly to start with. Ryuuji explained as they approached that his father had once been handsome and taller, but had had an accident of sorts he'd explain later.

If Ryuuji was mad at Terry, he hadn't shown it yet. Terry had made sure the kiss lasted long enough to ruin whatever it was terrible that Ryuuji was about to do. When he'd broken away, Ryuuji was looking at him, utterly perplexed. Perplexed or no, he had returned the kiss a little bit, probably mainly from not knowing what else to do and a surprising agreeable personality when having a rather sloppy kiss forced upon him, which Terry tried not to think about too much. If he squinted, he found he could nearly imagine Ryuuji as Dana. Dana in a trouser suit, that was. Pulling himself up from where he only then realised he'd rather aggressively pinned Ryuuji to the bench, Terry had decided the manly thing to do was to totally not explain himself. Instead, he straightened his perfectly straight tie and kept straightening it as they went to meet Ryuuji's father.

Upon seeing his son, the old man had rattled off something in Japanese Terry didn't know. It made Ryuuji frown, whatever it was. Then, the old man saw Terry.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Urm…" Terry started. Looking at the man's face left him at a loss for words. Ryuuji quickly intercepted with something in Japanese. Then, he turned to Ryuuji.

"This is Otousan."

"Hello, Mr. Otousan."

The man's eyes widened. He said something to Ryuuji. Ryuuji looked like he was trying not to laugh and panic at the same time. While Terry was certain he was positively thrilled he could keep Ryuuji from looking distressed for five seconds, he wondered what was so funny.

"Otousan means Father. Sorry," Ryuuji told him. "I can't believe you just called him Mr. Otousan. He thinks you're an idiot. I should have introduced you differently, sorry."

Oh great, thought Terry. Now the old Japanese man was an accurate judge of character. Excellent.

"I'm sorry?" said Terry with a shrug. Ryuuji's face returned to total seriousness when he faced his father again. They spoke to each other while Terry and a few large men he could only think of as the old man's handlers waited. One of them yawned and checked his watch. Terry checked his as well, even though he had nowhere to be.

Though it felt like an eternity, only ten minutes passed before the new set of handlers arrived to take charge of Mr. Otogi. Terry inspected their uniforms and van carefully as they lead the old man outside. He'd learned early in his career not to trust appearances.

There was a hand on Terry's arm. "Don't worry."

"What?" Terry asked as calmly as possible. Was Ryuuji telling him the doctors and handlers were the sure thing? "I was just-"

Ryuuji cut him off. "He's used to being shipped around. It's not a problem. Quit looking so goddamn horrified."

Terry admitted he had been taken aback a little by how Mr. Otogi was transported. He was also glad Ryuuji had translated his observation of the process as concern for humane treatment and not checking to see of any of the long coats were concealing weapons, ready to shoot the old man on the interstate.

"Where are you off to next?" Terry asked as they were driving from the airport. Ryuuji grinned. Terry didn't like it.

"Paulo's." said Ryuuji. This was, of course, a restaurant. Most of the four star restaurants in Gotham were possessive, proper nouns.

"Nice place," Terry said casually. He'd already effectively wiped the thought of kissing Ryuuji from his mind. The less he thought of it, the better. He felt oddly more Batman-like throwing his previous actions into the past like nothing. "Dana's always wanted me to take her there. She went with her father once and fell in love with the place."

"Is that so?" said Ryuuji, more preoccupied with staring out the window than keeping up the conversation. It wasn't like he had nothing to look at. Dusk was beginning to settle and all the little lights that showed Gotham on those pictures of the United States from outer space were starting to come to life.

"And here were are, Paulo's," Terry announced as he pulled up to the restaurant, parking and scooting aside to give the valet the wheel. Ryuuji lauded his wistful thinking with a laugh.

"You're coming with me," Ryuuji ordered, opening the navigator door and pulling Terry all the way through. "You've been working and driving all day. As a friend, I can't allow that."

Oh shit. Dinner? Ryuuji was in love with him, wasn't he? It may have been conceited to think so, but Terry always assumed the instant someone invited him to food other than Max, his family, older people, or Mr. Wayne, they were in love with him. He'd also just kissed a very rich game inventor in front of an audience. Imagine what the tourists must've though….

"How…nice of you," said Terry, stumbling inside with Ryuuji. The maitre d' was speaking in Italian or French or something, so Terry let Ryuuji do the talking and hoped he wasn't saying anything too embarrassing.

"Terry! Ryuuji!"

Terry turned hopefully to see Dana was indeed the one speaking. She was sitting next to Max in the booth Terry and Ryuuji had been ushered into. Thrilled, Terry sat immediately across from her.

"Nice duds, Ryuuj," said Max. Dana translated and Ryuuji smiled. He said the thing about the test run and the staying in Gotham for a few more years as translated by Dana.

"So, Terry, I hear you've been busy today driving Ryuuji all over town for Mr. Wayne," said Dana, bringing up the subject foremost on Terry's train of thought.

"About that," Terry said nervously, "I thought I told you about not making brunch this morning-"

"It's fine," said Dana, for once happy Terry had missed a date. Behold the power of Ryuuji, he supposed. "It's great to see the two of you finally getting to know each other. Ryuuji's been practising English, but he tells me he's not sure if you understood him. You should learn some Japanese, Terry."

"I learned _otousan_," Terry said. "Not like I'd ever have to use it, but I know it."

Dana face fell in seconds as it always did when she was reminded of some tragedy, such as the death of Terry's father, but Terry hadn't meant anything by it. He just meant _otousan _was a useless word to know. Dana said something to Ryuuji and Ryuuji's expression mimicked her own. "I just realised I never told Ryuuji about your dad, Ter. It's just hard to talk about those things, and you don't try to bring it up very much. I hear you met Ryuuji's today, though. What was he like?"

Terry shrugged. "Mr. Wayne, only shorter and in Japanese."

Ryuuji laughed. "And more ugly," he added. Terry nodded. That, too. He cast Ryuuji an irritated glance. Ryuuji playing ignorant was painful and infuriating to sit through even more so now that Terry had heard him speak fluent English all day. Not only did he know the guy spoke English, he'd had to sit and suffer through it.

The rest of the dinner continued at the same galling pace, Ryuuji speaking Japanese, Dana translating pieces, and Ryuuji saying a few things in bad English to Terry. For someone under immense pressure, Terry kept his nerve surprisingly well. A sadistic part in the back of his mind was waiting for Ryuuji to stop acting and proclaim to all present, "This guy practically sucked my face off in the airport this afternoon and he still hasn't told his girlfriend about it. Some kind of romantic ties, right? Can't think of any other way to stall me than that because actually, he's gay." This, of course, was only hypothetically malicious. Ryuuji was likely to find a more creative way to embarrass Terry-because Terry was certain he would pay him back. How could he not see through Terry's behaviour? If Terry were in Ryuuji's position, he'd be plotting revenge.

"So, Ryuuji, what did you think about Terry? Is he super boring or what?" Max asked. Terry felt the question like an electric shock. Why when he started thinking about terrible things did they suddenly consider happening? This was the perfect moment for Ryuuji to spill everything.

"Terry is nice," said Ryuuji. He continued in Japanese. Terry understood the words _otousan _and _Terry _and _Wayne-Powers_.

"How did the meeting at Wayne-Powers go?" Max asked. Ryuuji told her there had been a translator. Max responded to this when Dana finished talking by grinning at Ryuuji in a way that was downright evil. Terry looked at Ryuuji and Ryuuji looked uncertainly back. He as just as perplexed as when Terry had finished kissing him, if not more. Terry shook his head barely to let himk know that he didn't know what Max was grinning at either.

"Admit it, Ryuuji Otogi. You speak English."

Both boys were taken aback by this. Ryuuji, because he'd been found out. Terry, because Max had more investigative skill in her little finger than Terry had in his dreams. She'd known Ryuuji two days, spoken to him once, and didn't need anyone telling her he spoke English. Terry had been sitting next to Ryuuji in class and hearing all about him from Dana for three weeks .

"I'm…sorry?" Ryuuji started, trying to sound naïve and confused. Unfortunately, Max wasn't taking any poorly pronounced "I'm sorry" for an answer that evening.

"I saw the telecast," she said. "It was the yearly Kaiba Corp technology bulletin and not just your normal presentation to Wayne-Powers. That stuff's news online. Also, I found it hard to believe that Ryuuji Otogi, famous game inventor and entrepreneur, didn't speak English. Especially since during the years you preformed in the competitive gaming community you were known for your quips, Japanese, Chinese, _and _English. Part of your strategy is talking the opponent down, which is perfectly legal in DDD and M&W tournaments."

Terry was agog. So was Dana. Ryuuji looked slightly hot under the collar. He smiled at Max sheepishly. Two things embarrassed him, his clothes and being dramatically called out in front of everyone with no way to refute it.

"Do you want me to congratulate you or something?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"You mean you spoke English this whole time?" demanded the cheated Dana, her world likely crashing around here with the first fluent sentence out of Ryuuji's mouth. Now that the silence had broken, she couldn't contain herself. "You made Terry and me look like idiots?"

"No," Ryuuji said, quickly climbing back into Dana's good graces, "I wouldn't say you looked like an idiot. Your Japanese is really good for your level. You actually were very impressive translating what you did."

After thinking it over a moment, Dana beamed. Of course she couldn't stay mad at Ryuuji.

"You piece of shit," Terry muttered. Ryuuji winked at him.

"There's also something you don't know about Terry," said Ryuuji with his evil smirk. The colour drained from Terry's face. Oh shit. Slag it. And oh shit again.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

What would work better against Dana's questioning glance after Ryuuji confessed to having been kissed by Terry? Denial? No. She'd believe Ryuuji completely and only get mad at Terry for lying. Silence? No. She'd think he had nothing to say for himself and would thus be irrevocably guilty. Befuddlement? No. She'd tell him to shut up and think straight, to breathe and just explain.

Go on a limb and say what the hell, he was gay? No. She'd probably believe him and consider it the cause of all of his absences from their dates.

No matter what, the truth was out of the question and he should just wave farewell to all future high school heterosexual relationships. There was no doubt Dana would tell everyone. Terry was in trouble.

"Terry knew way before any of you that I spoke English," Ryuuji exaggerated. The two girls looked at him with betrayed expressions. Successfully, the attention was diverted from Ryuuji to Terry.

"You mean you didn't tell me?" Max.

"You mean you let me look like an idiot going on about how he needed help in English?" Dana.

Terry had no idea why he was suddenly so much worse than Ryuuji. What the hell just happened? He turned to Ryuuji. "You," but Ryuuji wasn't listening. He was paying the bill and being blissfully uninvolved with the argument.

Terry trailed Dana out of the restaurant, trying to explain himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't know until this morning." Technically, sure, he had known way, way before Dana or Max, but that information was not part of the timeline he was using.

"Don't worry, Terry. I'm sure if you had made it to brunch then you would have told me."

"Of course!" Terry exclaimed happily. Of course! Not.

"So how was your day with Ryuuji?"

"Interesting." Four syllables explained everything so nicely.

"It was nice of him to arrange dinner, so we can't been too upset with him. He's probably got reasons for not speaking English."

"Yeah, he said something about not knowing things and not wanting people to know how much he didn't know," said Terry, not sure if he was remembering correctly. Ryuuji had said it all so fast.

"Really," said Dana, smiling, "that's so cute."

Terry rolled his eyes. Yeah, sure. Adorable. "When did he arrange the dinner anyway? I was with him most of the day. All he did was give his presentation, go to lunch, change clothes, and sit in the airport forever."

"I called him at the airport," Dana said. "Were you there?"

"Urm…"

"Well, he told me about brunch and apologised for it. He explained where you were and what you were doing. Then he invited Max and me to dinner."

Terry nodded. This was going to suck, but he had to do it. "Hey, Dana?" he asked tentatively, "Did, urm, anything unusual happen on the phone?"

Dana looked at Terry uncertainly and frowned. "What do you mean by unusual?"

"Like, any weird sounds, sudden silence, someone else talking?"

Dana thought about it for a few moments. "Well, actually, near the end of the call, I mean, he'd already said goodbye, but-"

HONK.

Terry and Dana jumped at the explosion of noise from the parking lot besides them. Ryuuji was sitting in the navigator seat across from the valet, waving. "Assistance," he yelled to Terry, pointing at the wheel. He took the valet's seat as the valet got out, mimicking turning the wheel and driving. "Slag it. He's a lot more annoying since he started speaking English," Terry said with a groan. He kissed Dana goodbye and hurried over to the car.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

"Your friend Max is smarter than all of you," Ryuuji said sleepily from the back seat. It was a thirty minute drive back to his apartment at night because of the traffic, and Ryuuji was utilising the time by sleeping. Terry suppressed a yawn and remained focussed on the road. "Wake me up when we're home," Ryuuji mumbled, making himself comfortable in the back seat. After deliberating a moment on which to where, he used his jacket as a blanket and his vest as a pillow.

The city had grown much colder with the sun gone away. Gotham nights sent chills up the spine of anyone regardless of the weather, but a cold wind definitely helped. Dana had joked that screams were practically the city's anthem, theme song, soundtrack or whatever the hell she had said they were. Terry's inner Batman was stirred into restlessness on nights like this, and particularly at the sound of screams. He could feel his reflexes and senses gearing up for action behind the scenes. The only problem right now was that he was driving, and there was very little action require there. He looked in the mirror back at Ryuuji, but the guy busy falling asleep. There wasn't even anyone to talk to. Slag it.

"We're here," Terry announced. There was no response. With a sigh, Terry reached back, but his fingers only brushed the long jacket. He tugged it off of Ryuuji. Nothing. The guy was a stone.

"Slag it," Terry muttered and got out of the car. If there was one thing that gave him the creeps regardless of all of his Batman knowing better, it was night time parking garages. Everything was so still and echoing. It always seemed no-one was ever there when you were, so if you fell over and had a seizure right then, no-one would know. He had never liked the idea of Dana walking alone in a parking garage at night. Honestly, no-one else was ever, ever, ever around when something happened or some poor girl was attacked. There were very few places to hide.

In a very quiet manner, Ryuuji was snoring. Terry purposely slammed the door as loudly as he was sure he could get away with. Through the windshield he saw Ryuuji's arm fell off of his chest. Great. That was exactly what he'd been going for.

Terry opened the door to the back seat next. Leaning over to shake Ryuuji's shoulder, he paused for the smallest of moments. He could see Ryuuji's face dimly in the light coming in from the darkened windows. His stomach sank watching Ryuuji asleep. He'd kissed this guy and yet…and yet Ryuuji had expressed no interest in him whatsoever after barely kissing him back. It was insulting, and Terry still hadn't shaken the habit of viewing himself as God's gift to women and anyone attracted to men. It was why he feared gay men. He was certain they all wanted him.

"Hey, man, wake up," Terry pleaded, shaking Ryuuji's shoulder with increasing force for every half second Ryuuji didn't stir. "C'mon. I've got to drive back to Mr. Wayne's and you're wasting tim-mph!"

Either Ryuuji was having a very active dream, or he'd just wrapped his jacket around Terry and pulled the unsuspecting teen on top of him. Terry had only a second to think before being pulled into a crushing kiss and tumbling onto the floor of the car between the front and back seats. He remembered thinking that he had no idea he could fit there.

So much for the night awakening his Batman reflexes. How the hell did he fall for this?

It wasn't fair, but Terry soon found himself comparing Dana and Ryuuji's kiss. Why he was putting up with Ryuuji kissing him, he wasn't sure. Maybe he felt he deserved it for earlier. Maybe he was curious because he was sure Dana was going to leave him again. Maybe he felt it affirmed to him that he really was God's gift to all who desired men.

There was also the alarming moment Terry came to the conclusion Ryuuji kissed a hell of a lot better than Dana. Dana wasn't a fan of intensive kisses. She liked to express her passion in other ways such as a thoughtful touch and emotional support. She grounded Terry. Ryuuji just went crazy. Dana's energy in their relationship also went down proportionally with how little she saw Terry. It was why Terry could remain in limbo between her and Melanie until Max came around and told him to pick one. It was why Terry was always looking for new relationships in people he'd just meant, even bubble people. It may have been why Terry was so attracted to the unattainable sort because what he could attain wasn't all that interesting and liked to complain when she didn't see him enough.

Ryuuji, however. What the hell?

Terry was kissing him back now, reaching up, running his hands along him. Now, he was tasting Ryuuji and thinking how good he felt. Dana hadn't made him feel this way in a long time, and definitely not since he'd become Batman. Ryuuji may have had an unfair advantage as well. Being male, he knew better where to touch, how, and how far it would take this. Terry found himself gasping for air ask Ryuuji finished loosening his tie and began moving downwards.

"Stop," he croaked finally. "_Stop_."

Ryuuji was staring up curiously from Terry's neckline. Seeing Terry's expression, he grinned. "Mmh-hm?" he hummed in question, a ringing amusement in his tone. He sounded perfectly ready to get back to work once Terry said whatever he needed to say.

"Why?" Terry asked. He didn't seem to be able to get past the single syllables.

Ryuuji liked the question. He chuckled into Terry's neck for a moment. The vibration made Terry shiver. Ryuuji nearly laughed out loud at that. When he pulled himself back to Terry's eye level, he was smiling. Was this a joke to him? Great. Terry was about to be psychologically tortured and compromised by the son of a clown. It was almost ironic considering he was Batman.

This chain of thought was answered and irrupted by Ryuuji digging his fingernails into Terry's abdomen beneath his shirt and scratching down. Terry winced, but knew it was only pain for effect. Then, the pressure increased and Terry could hardly breath. "No-one make a move on me within minutes of my father without paying for it," Ryuuji said threateningly into his ear. His hair tickled Terry's nose, which was annoying, but less so that not breathing. After a few moments of coughing and general discomfort, Ryuuji let go. "Also, you're cute," he continued in brighter tone. "Either way, you started it."

Terry felt a slight throbbing in the back of his skull. He must've hit his head earlier. "I didn't mean to," he said. Ryuuji couldn't get enough of it.

"You also can't help but make me smile," he said, giving Terry a quick peck on the lips. Then, he laughed and sat back. "Which isn't too great, really, because it's hard to kiss you when I'm smiling." He tried once more, but only got so far as a peck again.

Terry held still as Ryuuji climbed off of him and pulled the pale green vest out from between the cushions, He tossed it back on haphazardly. "I suppose that's it for the night," Ryuuji said, unable to wipe the smug grin from his face. "I've got the giggles. I'm really hopeless once I've got the giggles." Terry shrugged and handed him his now crushed suit jacket. Ryuuji wasn't smiling as he inspected it, which irritated Terry because why use your clothing to immobilise someone when you care what happened to the clothing? When his eyes fell back on Terry, Ryuuji smiled again and tossed the jacket back on as well. Terry suppose Ryuuji had concluded the wrinkling to be worth it.

"It's been a great day, today, Terry," Ryuuji said, energetically helping Terry up from the trap between the front and back seats. "You're an excellent driver, and I feel we've really gotten to know each other."

Terry only grunted and winced as he stood out of the car. His wide-shouldered frame was not meant for tiny spaces in the backseat of a car, no matter how supposedly spacious. When he closed the door, Ryuuji jumped onto him and locked lips one last time. Even though it was possible to get away, Terry obliged him, holding onto the car for balance as Ryuuji's hands found their way back underneath his untucked shirt. It was embarrassing, but when Ryuuji pulled away, Terry followed for a few inches. What a stupid impulse.

"See you in class Monday," Ryuuji said, turning and heading for the door into the condominium. Terry stayed leaned up against the car and watched him go. The places Ryuuji had dug his fingernails into were beginning to throb dully. They reminded Terry to tuck his shirt in, but now his tie really was hopeless. He sighed. Mr. Wayne was going to kill him.

oooooooooooooooooooooo


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey, it's not just me. You kissed Ra's Al Ghul."

"When I thought he was Talia. And then only once. You, however, were aware for the whole ten minutes you spent making out in the back seat of my car."

Mr. Wayne always waited until Terry got back from crime fighting to start interrogating him. It wasn't fair. Mess up Terry's night, not his naptime, please.

"There are pictures of you both at the airport already online," Mr. Wayne told him, pulling a few up as examples. Terry watched them with a mixed expression of horror and morbid curiosity. So that was how he and Ryuuji looked together. "It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't Ryuuji Otogi. Don't be surprised if Dana already knows."

Speaking of whom, "Are you sure he wasn't on the phone with Dana when you slagging told me to stop him?"

"Yes," said Mr. Wayne, offended Terry would think otherwise. "He was telling a false team of doctors which terminal to head for. You…successfully…cut him off."

"Then I guess I did my civic duty for the day," Terry concluded, looking for his shirt so he could leave. Mr. Wayne eyed the scratches on his torso warily, but Terry ignored the gaze and pulled his shirt on. He practically ran up the stairs and out of the cave. He needed desperately to get in touch with Dana.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Hey, slow down, Ter. I know we haven't had sex in a while, but you haven't been starving. Relax."

Terry made a face at Dana. Yeah. Ryuuji had nothing on her in intensity. Still, Terry had to try.

"I know you're worried about the news and want to prove yourself as a real man and everything, but honestly…you shouldn't be scared to tell me why you Frenched Ryuuji Otogi in public." That was the problem. Terry simply couldn't tell her. Why couldn't Dana accept that?

"I really wanted him to get to know me?" Terry joked badly. Dana frowned and swore to refuse all future advances until he told her the truth. She had forgotten she'd already made this promise when Terry had been unreliable dating-wise.

Of course, Max hadn't taken things any better.

"Since when were you gay, McGinnis? And why do celebrity gossip columns get to know before I do?"

Terry went to school Monday dreading it. Things were bad enough when he had to wake up in the morning with his brother, the twerp, making kissy faces and his mother giving him the weepy, I-just-don't-know-you-anymore-do-I-? look, even though she had already lectured Terry about how she loved him and he could be out making bad decisions like drugs and street violence that were worse than closeted homosexuality. She just wanted to be more informed of his life and blah blah blah…your father….

All things considered, Terry was pleased no-one at school treated him too differently besides a few comments from Nelson and his group. This may have been because Dana hadn't dumped him. Yet.

Terry's relationship with Ryuuji in third hour also appeared the same, though Terry swore that every now and then Ryuuji would look at him in ways that somehow managed to come off as startling inappropriate. While mostly ignorant on the mechanics of gay relationships, Terry recognised the certain looks Ryuuji mockingly threw at him when he sensed Terry's vision had crept into his vicinity. As a result, Terry spent too much time in third hour contemplating sex and sexuality instead of math, which was a perfectly acceptable teenage thing for him to do most days, except he wasn't thinking of girls. That part bothered him mostly, but not enough to stop his masochistic sort of imagination.

There weren't too many options for gay sex that he could think of, and none were appealing. Supposedly there was the terrifying anal sex, which Terry didn't believe sounded comfortable for either of the parties involved, and then there was getting each other off in different ways, which Terry would be slagged if he ever did that to another guy. Inevitably Terry accepted that he must be straight because what made up his ideal of gay sex did not appeal to him and actually made him a little sick thinking about. There was no chance Terry would let someone do that to him, and no chance he'd ever do that to another man. He concluded that he was turned on thinking about Ryuuji's hands and mouth and energy, nothing else. Anything more than that would have him running away in the most masculine manner it took to run like hell.

"Terrence McGinnis, unless you think you're going to spot the z-score of these heptathlon results skirting past in the hall, I suggest you focus your attention back into the classroom."

A few suck ups laughed. Terry glanced at Ryuuji, who wasn't involved in the class at all, but was typing away madly at what were supposedly his notes. Why did Ryuuji even put up with the class? He was a genius and knew everything, but apparently only when knowing everything was convenient. It could have been that Ryuuji could turn it off. Ryuuji had already taken every level of calculus, for christsakes. How could someone sit for all of the classes they'd already masterly genius'd their way through and not want to throw something at the teacher?

There was a sudden, bright orange flash in the corner of Terry's computer screen jolting him off of his speculations. The title of the flashing icon was "otousan". Terry looked up curiously at Ryuuji, but Ryuuji was still typing. Terry decided to take the risk and clicked. A little window opened with a text box. Written at the top was the question:

_Does Dana call you TerBear?_

Terry frowned. What the hell? He typed an unenthusiastic _no_

_Too bad. I'm hacking into the school computer system…well, if you even want to call this hacking. Hacking sounds more glamorous and implies I'm actually working at it. Honestly, I prefer to call this browsing. The system practically let me in._

Terry shrugged. _and?_

_You are so difficult to impress. Good day._

The conversation ended with a frowning emoticon right then with whom Terry could only assume was Ryuuji signing out. He looked at Ryuuji one more time and saw the guy wasn't typing anymore, but was staring at the teacher and dozing off. Fine, let him be in a prissy mood. That wasn't Terry's responsibility. Terry's only responsibility at the moment was to settle on the placings for the women's heptathlon and nothing more.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooo

Max was the only person who saw Terry in the light he wanted her to. Although he hadn't told her about making out in the parking garage afterwards, he had told her about distracting…someone...with the kiss. He conveniently forgot to specify that that the person he'd been distracting was Ryuuji himself.

"You just don't think, do you, McGinnis?" asked Max, reclining in the driver's seat of some arcade game she'd just finished filling the top score panel of. Terry nodded.

"What did the old man have to say?"

"He basically chewed me to pieces."

"Figures. He kissed Ra's Al Ghul, though."

"Yeah, but he thought it was Talia, and then not in public. If anyone was being a creep there, it was Ra's Al Ghul."

"Wayne has got a good point. Pizza's here," Max said, eyeing their table around Terry's head. Terry followed her over, but had suddenly lost his appetite. Max shrugged and said there was more for her then, and that it was so kind he'd paid half already.

"You've got to admit, Terry," said Max two slices later. Terry was looking troubled and it was interfering with her pizza enjoyment, "to everyone but me, you're looking pretty ambiguous right now. I won't lie to you, though. It _has _increased your popularity with some of the girls."

"Oh yeah, that's all I care about, my popularity with girls. My masculinity and heterosexuality just pale in comparison," said Terry sarcastically. For his lead counsel, Max was failing him in the time he most needed advice.

"Who says masculinity and heterosexuality are the same thing?" said Max, failing him even more. "You're so narrow minded."

"I'm not about to argue gay stereotypes and prejudice with you-"

"Good, because you'd lose."

"-I just want to know how to let Ryuuji know that I didn't mean to kiss him and not to read into it. He's gay and everything, and I don't want him thinking I am gay, also."

Max cleared her throat and looked at Terry levelly. "Did Ryuuji tell you he was gay?"

"Well, no, but-"

"No? Then how the hell do you know?"

"What?" Terry was frowning. Sometimes Max thought too deeply into things. She was sitting back again, defying him, challenging him to argue her winning point. Terry managed an ashamed half shrug, allowing her to continue.

"Sure," said Max smartly, "there are rumours about him and Kaiba Seto. There are also rumours about Batman and Robin, which is why in the Batman musical, Robin is played by a girl. Lucky for the writers, Robin's a gender-neutral name. Everything's rumours."

Terry finally shook his head in disagreement. "No, Ryuuji is definitely gay."

"How are you so sure?" asked Max. She didn't believe him at all.

"For one, he kissed me back."

"He's polite."

"He acts…gaily." There had to be a better word for that.

"Or so you assume."

"He dresses strangely."

"That's like saying all of Domino, Japan's gay."

Terry secretly speculated that all of Domino, Japan was, in fact, gay. "He's got long, feminine hair."

"I have short hair."

"But yours is pink."

"Ryuuji's isn't."

"He flips his hair a lot."

"That's vanity."

"Feminine vanity."

"The guy's got nice hair. Give him a break, alright?"

"Okay. Well, he's not attracted to girls."

"You don't have to be in a relationship all the time to prove how straight you are, Terry."

"He jumped me in the car."

"Then you-_wait_. He what?"

Terry mentally shot himself for letting this slip. Poorly, he attempted to recover himself. "Uh, he tried to jump me but I fended him off." He wondered what the straightest thing to say was right then. "It was, uh, very upsetting."

Max looked angry. She sounded angry. "How come I just don't believe you, Terry?"

"Well, I…" Oh slag it. She saw right through him.

"Now you are making up stories about him jumping you? You're the worst liar ever."

Terry went from horrified to deeply offended in half a second. "What? Why do you think I am lying to you? Ask Ryuu-believe me," he'd thought better of telling her to ask Ryuuji anything. "Just believe me because deep down you know I would never lie like that?"

"I can't tell what I know about you now, Terry," said Max, shaking her head. Terry tried to say something, but she shushed him. Obviously they had exhausted the subject. "Now, the important question is: Are you going to eat any of this slagging pizza?"

Terry sighed and committed himself to a slice. Before he'd taken hardly more than a bite, his phone rang.

"McGinnis, I have a plan. I need you here at once." snapped Mr. Wayne from the other end.

"C'mon, I'm eating," Terry argued back.

"McGinnis…" Mr Wayne's voice had become it's dangerous growl that reminded Terry the old man could still do a great deal of harm to someone with his walking stick.

"Fine, fine," Terry sighed and wrapped three slices in a napkin, mouthing the words 'Mr. Wayne' to Max and pointing to the phone. She mouthed 'duh' right back, because Mr. Wayne was the only person who ever really called Terry. She was right. It was a sad existence, that of the Batman.

"Have fun," Max yelled as Terry rushed out the door. He seriously doubted it.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooo

"You want me to what?" asked Terry, stunned and frazzled and pinching himself to wake up from the most terrible nightmare of his entire life.

"Pursue your relationship with Ryuuji Otogi for investigative purposes," Mr. Wayne repeated just as mercilessly.

"But, I-"

"Didn't think your little stunt at the airport wouldn't come without repercussions?"

Well, yes and no. Terry hated the way Mr. Wayne finished his sentences. They always made Terry sound like an idiot.

"Just what kind of 'relationship' am I pursuing here?"

"Nothing more than you can handle," said Mr. Wayne. "You simply need him to trust you." Yeah, that was easy for the old man to say. The guy hadn't had a social life in two million years. "And stop looking at me like it's my fault, Terry. You got yourself into this."

"But his father's safely in the institution. What could Ryuuji possibly do to him now?"

Mr. Wayne had been waiting for such a question. He turned dramatically to his computer and observed the data over his clasped hands, inviting Terry to do the same. "I suspect Ryuuji's getting tired of all these near misses. Gotham's corrupt. He'll have little trouble finding a way to murder the man here."

"And how does my getting close to him help? He's not going to magically confess everything to me. Just because I'm with Dana, I don't go around telling her everything about being Batman."

"Yes, but you will be in close proximity to him much of the time," said Mr. Wayne, pulling up a schedule on the desktop. Terry saw his weeks plotted out before him and suddenly felt very used. "I'm also enrolling you in Japanese and Chinese classes so you can listen in on his conversations without him suspecting you. He's confident you don't speak either language, so he feels comfortable using them around you on the phone. It's to your advantage, really."

Terry nodded, but there was still something bothering him. "All right, but, well, how close do we have to be? I mean, honestly."

"As close as is needed to acquire the information."

Terry sighed. "So should I just break up with Dana now?"

"I never said you had to. That's your choice," said Mr. Wayne, which irritated Terry further. Mr. Wayne was diabolical like that, pretending he didn't know what he was implying. Wasn't it Mr. Wayne's dream to have Terry finally cut lose on his emotional connections and the risk of having a love interest? The old man must've been thrilled, him being the evil little anti-matchmaker making hell for Terry. Terry imagined Mr. Wayne as a very small Asian woman dressed in red and black with devil horns and a pitchfork. The image made him even more upset. Terry had to physically shake the thought from his head, and when it was gone, one thing still remain: This was all _someone's _fault, and Terry would strive to see them suffer for their crime.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o

Ryuuji Otogi was idling on a bench outside Hamilton High, inspecting his fingernails while a group of girls briefed him in simple English and broken Japanese about the goings-on. He seemed to be only half listening, nodding occasionally to treat his fans with attention, only the girls could not tell because Ryuuji fooled everyone but Terry. Terry felt his pulse and temperature rise as he watched, knowing full well that Ryuuji Otogi was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch and too attractive and interesting to the girls for them to realise.

And as much as Terry hated it, he needed to speak with Ryuuji, needed to be "friends" with Ryuuji. The hardest part was summoning the will to walk across the grounds to get to him.

"Hello, Ryuuji," said Terry brightly as he approached. The girls around Ryuuji looked up, a few smiling knowingly once they recognised Terry. Terry forced himself past the unwanted attention, "have you, uh, seen Dana around?"

Of course it was a lame start. That was Terry McGinnis for you, master of glib and subtly. He was nervous as the girls watched him, waiting for something a bit more stunning.

"Dana? No, sorry," said Ryuuji, again with the accent and the not speaking English thing. Terry had been hoping Ryuuji would give up the act after being found out by Max, but apparently no-one else in Hamilton High cared about international gaming. And if there was anyone else, they were likely too meek and worshipful to put their demigod on the spot.

"Oh, well thanks, then. I guess I'll see you later," said Terry quickly aborting before he'd gotten anywhere.

"I can help."

Terry groaned inwardly. He'd been hoping Ryuuji wouldn't say something like that. Unfortunately, before Terry could reject the idea, Ryuuji was leaping cheerfully after him and looking very smug and please with himself. Terry couldn't imagine what was so great and felt that he really didn't want to know.

"God, the Gotham girls are tiring. Even forcing them to speak Japanese doesn't keep them from talking forever. It's really a gift," said Ryuuji as they entered the school again He was back to his chatty old self, and Terry was at least glad not to be dealing with someone who pretended everything he said was incoherent. "Also, I believe Dana is at a swim practice right now. They've got a meet coming up, and even though Dana's not competing, she's practicing standby if someone can't go. She told you that already. You should really keep up. People are usually speaking to you, Terry, not at you."

"Why didn't you tell me all of that earlier?" asked Terry, no longer baffled to why Ryuuji knew more about Dana's personal life than he did. He'd come to accept it as an unavoidable fact.

Ryuuji grinned wickedly. "C'mon, you can't expect the poor, verbally limited Japanese boy to tell you all that and then leave him to the chatty Gotham girls. It's cruel."

With Terry, Ryuuji was able to speak to his full ability, but Terry, though he was sure Ryuuji was brimming with things to say after weeks of painfully limited English, didn't really care what Ryuuji was going on about. Instead, Terry was strategising, and for some reason the plans he came up with fell apart before he could initiate them. An example of this was that they were both looking for Dana when Terry wasn't all that interested where she could be. Now, Terry was trying to back out and give himself a moment to change direction.

"I really don't need to drag you along with me. You probably have something better to do."

Ryuuji shrugged and said no, he didn't think so, which lead to the unvoiced question in Terry of what exactly Ryuuji did with himself all day. You know, when he wasn't taking place in fan girl orgies and assassination plots. This lack of agenda was officially filed away in Terry's mind as "deeply suspicious", and to be looked into with further investigation at a better time.

"Wait, didn't the swim team leave this afternoon to go to the meet?"

Ryuuji grinned at Terry in a manner that always made him uncomfortable. "I was wondering if we'd have to walk all the way to the gym before you remembered that," he said. "Congratulations. You are capable of listening and remembering. Dana doesn't give you any credit. How she puts it, I assumed there was something very wrong with you. Like, mentally."

"How exactly does she put it?" Terry asked, morbidly fascinated with what his girlfriend said behind his back.

"Badly," said Ryuuji, "let's leave it at that. I was stunned when Mr. Wayne told me you could drive. Like hearing a chimp could drive…."

"Ha ha…" grumbled the now very put off Terry. So Ryuuji thought he was an idiot. Great. Not that it would have particularly made Terry's day to hear otherwise, he still felt horribly abused by everyone. Did he really come off as so incredibly stupid? Or did everyone ask Dana about it before they formed their own opinions?

"Don't look so gloomy about it," said Ryuuji brightly as they re-entered the school yard and found it to be well-emptied. "I've personally come to accept that she exaggerates, and you are perfectly normal. Or, as perfectly normal as you could be with all your responsibilities."

Terry was suspicious of what Ryuuji meant by responsibilities. The problem with Ryuuji was that while at times he seemed to know a lot less than he really did, there were a few times where Terry thought Ryuuji honestly did know less but started bluffing so no-one could tell. He'd mostly seen this when Ryuuji interacted with Max, but then there wasn't really anyone who could keep up with Max except Mr. Wayne.

Now, Terry's concern was whether or not Ryuuji was hinting at Terry's after school activities, and if he was, how much he knew about them. Terry never suspected that Ryuuji knew he was Batman sometimes. He suspected it all the time. The fault lay in Ryuuji's ability to appear to know everything, especially since he really did know most things so that everyone was better off assuming he knew it all.

"What responsibilities? Old Man Wayne?" asked Terry.

"I'm not sure. Yet. But whatever they are, they are demanding. Or, the old man, Wayne, is very demanding. I'm curious why he's got a strange kid looking after him in his old age. I mean, there are professionals for that sort of thing."

"What can I say? The old man's an eccentric," said Terry very easily and very smoothly, implying in every possible way that the subject they were on did not matter. Ryuuji frowned at him.

"But why you? You'd think he'd want someone more responsible, like an honours student or at least someone without a criminal record."

Terry stopped. "Since when do I have a criminal record?"

"Since Dana told me all about you enough to make me very sorry you trust someone who talks as much as she does," said Ryuuji lightly. He liked the subject of Terry and Dana, Terry had already surmised that much. It seemed to bring Ryuuji joy to be in the midst of their rather dysfunctional relationship. "Speaking of you and Dana," said Ryuuji, because obviously he'd been working the entire conversation to this favourite subject of his, "most people would question what she sees in you."

"Why do you care?" Terry was getting defensive, as Ryuuji expected he would. Dana was not a good topic for Terry. It was a very complicated thing-enough to make him accuse gay men of being straight. "Are you bothering me because you wish Dana was your girlfriend?" he asked with more seriousness than he'd been expecting. Because it would explain quite a lot, a straight Ryuuji. If Ryuuji really wasn't gay, but just wanted Dana, then all the hell he brought started to make slightly more sense.

"No, of course not." said Ryuuji, making an annoyed face at the thought. "What I mean is, I'm not like most people. Instead, I wonder what you see in her."

In that case, maybe who Ryuuji wanted was Terry. This made the conversation suddenly uncomfortable again.

"She's my girlfriend," said Terry on default. That was the reason for now and always concerning Dana. Why did Terry try so hard to win Dana back? Why did Terry let Dana complain about him? Why did Terry not complain about Dana back? Because she was his girlfriend.

"Yes, that's extremely obvious. But, why?"

"She's a good person."

"There are many more good people out there with infinitely less attractive breasts. You can't tell me you like her just because she's a good person."

"I'll admit she's good looking, but looks aren't everything." Terry secretly wished somehow Dana would be able to hear that and be rightly impressed with how stand-up a guy her boyfriend was.

This answer annoyed Ryuuji. "That, too; you're a lovely couple. But is there anything special about her? You know, besides the ability to forgive you of genocide and look great doing it?"

"W-well…" Terry stammered. He tried to think of something, anything, but before he could say how loyal she was and how wonderful she was, he remembered how she'd broken up with him only a week before, how she didn't want to talk to him until he told her about Ryuuji, how he didn't feel he could really trust her to know that he was Batman. There had to be something wrong between them if he didn't tell her everything and didn't very much want to except for when a more romantic mood struck him.

Ryuuji had meanwhile started grinning very wickedly back at Terry. Terry imagined this guy had to be the devil because he was wearing plenty of red and was devising a means to Terry's downfall as a part-time normal teenager. What little normalcy Terry had left in his life, Ryuuji was trying desperately to rip out from under him, and Terry believe he was already losing the fight.

"Can you think of just one thing?" Ryuuji asked mockingly. He was having a blast, wasn't he?

Terry didn't answer the question. He gave Ryuuji a parting spiteful look before walking off without a word into a large crowd of teenagers where Ryuuji couldn't follow him and still maintain the fluent conversation.

Behind him, he thought he heard Ryuuji laughing.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooo

Max had been briefed on Terry's mission to "befriend" Ryuuji by Mr. Wayne. He hadn't told her everything, only that it would help along Terry's current assignment. Max wouldn't have been Max of she had accepted this answer, but for all her arguments, Mr. Wayne's resolve to secrecy was stronger. Somehow he'd finally convinced her that even though she really wanted to know all the particulars, she wasn't going to get them, and until she accepted that, she would be given no responsibility. Max enjoyed being in the know as much as helping to investigate cases, and in the end decided she would learn more by arguing less.

"Hey, how are you two crazy kids doing?" Max asked as she came upon Terry and Ryuuji waiting for her at Cheesy Dan's. When neither said anything, she went to sarcasm. "Well, don't let me interrupt such an involved conversation."

Terry hadn't said anything to Ryuuji since he'd arrived. The tension was obvious, and Ryuuji only laughed at him. This caused Terry to clam up further and Ryuuji to be even more amused.

"So, how have things been going, Ryuuji?" Max asked to start him talking. Ask Ryuuji one question and he greedily filled in a conversation with the long answer. It was convenient for Max since she didn't have to come up with a whole lot to say.

Terry watched Ryuuji speak, not listening in the slightest. He remembered painfully how before leaving this afternoon, Mr. Wayne had lectured him once again on the progress Terry hadn't been making for a week since the case began. Terry wondered if saving some old geezer's life was really worth all the trouble he found himself in.

"As you know, everyone's got questions about you and Terry," said Max, ignoring the sharp look from Terry across the table.

"Do they?" asked Ryuuji, feigning surprise. "There's nothing much to question. There's really nothing at all. Terry's got his precious Dana."

"Oh yeah, but everyone's been a bit unsure about Terry for years," continued Max. "If you know what I mean."

"Excuse me?" interrupted Terry. He grabbed Max by the arm and dragged her out of earshot of Ryuuji. This was not how he'd imagined the conversation to go. He was going to find ways to stand Ryuuji and learn them well. They were not about to have gossip hour about the public opinion on Terry McGinnis. "Just what the hell are you talking about?"

"Calm down. Mr. Wayne _did _tell me to help you out," Max reminded him. Terry shook his head.

"He said help out, not hook up. I have to be friends with Ryuuji."

"That's not what it sounded like when Mr. Wayne told me-"

"Bruce Wayne is a sick, _sick _old man, Max. Don't listen too carefully."

Max stepped back and gave Terry another of her famous looks where she summed up the entire situation in a few seconds and told him about it. It made her an excellent strategist and moral compass, but Terry usually found it irritating. "I think you've got cold feet and can't finish what you started. The old man told me how this was your fault to begin with and now you can't deal with it. So, I say we do things how Mr. Wayne wants, and you asked Ryuuji out sometime."

Terry visibly disliked the idea. There had to be a better way.

"There has to be a better way."

Max seemed to think Terry was an idiot to wish for so much. She dragged him back to the table and before Ryuuji. Terry, uncertain what she was getting at, look about himself for an escape.

"Terry has something to ask you, Ryuuji."

Terry blanched. "What?

Max punched Terry in the shoulder, daring him to do something stupid. "Forgive him for being an idiot. He can't help it." She gave Terry a warning look.

"Sorry," Terry apologised. "What I mean is…would you, uh…" There was a long pause. "…like me…to buy the pizza now, because it takes maybe fifteen minutes and that gets to be a long time and stuff, you know?"

"TERRY," snapped Max at his side. She elbowed Terry strongly in the ribs to make him reasonable. Terry nearly buckled over at the force.

"Owe, what the-" Max pulled her arm back threateningly. "I mean, well, actually, would you like me to go out sometimes. With you. I mean, go somewhere sometime with you. Or whatever. And not Max." He glared at her. "Definitely _not _Max."

Ryuuji, who had appeared bemused and sadistically pleased throughout the performance, now paused to consider the offer. Terry was stuck trying to figure which answer he himself personally preferred. A resounding "no" would have been terrific, but it would have defeated the purpose of getting to know Ryuuji so much better in the first place. It also would have offended Terry, who was vain enough to assume once again that it was difficult to resist the physical attractiveness that was his curse. The alternative, however, was a delighted "yes", and Terry didn't want to think what that entailed for his future.

As far as Terry could assume, the answer was going to be and could only be yes. Because life and Mr. Wayne hated him like that. Ryuuji was going to ask for a place and a time, and Terry didn't have one. Returning to Cheesy Dan's was out of the question, seeing that it was a crowded hang out and not the least bit intimate unless you were twelve and bringing your first girlfriend there for a stomping game of air hockey. And while air hockey was a very awesome game, Terry figured that anyone besides himself would fail to see the romance involved in playing it with someone you considered just as cool as you were and worthy of the match.

Terry frantically decided he would pick and choose finer details once Ryuuj committed. Maybe Max had a plan. Terry didn't know the first thing about men going out with men and felt he was at a horrible loss when instigating something he didn't fully understand. Ryuuji likely gave him more credit than he deserved, seeing that Terry had made the first move in a moment of sublime stupidity.

"I would love to go out with you," said Ryuuji, grinning supremely. A part of Terry cried. "But, no."

There was a long pause, as even Max was struck entirely speechless.

"W-_what_?"

Ryuuji spoke more slowly this time. "No. I'm sorry, but I'm just not interested. I'll take you up on the pizza offer though. I don't like pepperonis, but everything else is fine."


	3. Chapter 3

"He turned me down," said Terry for the tenth time since he entered the Batcave. "The bastard _turned me down_."

"Yes, shocking, isn't it," said Mr. Wayne. Terry had still not fully recuperated from the rejection of a few hours earlier, and Mr. Wayne had grown tired of hearing about it.

"I can't slagging believe it," Terry continued to himself, seeing that Mr. Wayne had stopped listening fifteen minutes ago. "He said no just like he meant it. He didn't even care. And then he made me buy his slagging pizza."

"Clearly you didn't try enough," said Mr. Wayne. "If Ryuuji doesn't find you appealing, then make yourself appealing. Start simple. What can you think of that Ryuuji likes?"

Terry shrugged sullenly. "Men? His hair? Being a bastard?"

"Well, your immaturity certainly isn't very appealing, Terry," said Mr. Wayne with a frown. This case really brought out all the worse qualities of his protégé. The man was nearly to a level of despair over the situation. "And, you know nothing about Ryuuji Otogi."

"What are you talking about? I know loads about him. You told me about college and English and everything."

"That's not the information that's going to work here. You aren't handling this case with any maturity."

"You'd feel the same in my position."

"I would still remain calm and not complain about what I had to do."

"Yes, but-"

"_Grow up_, McGinnis."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooo

"Maybe he likes a more aggressive approach. Now, you've pretty much backed off and wussed out. I wouldn't like you," said Max lazily into the phone prompted on her shoulder, somehow managing to simultaneously console Terry and compose a paper on the life and so exciting times of T.S. Elliot. "Really, Terry, you are being such a baby."

The far-away voice of Terry McGinnis in the receiver said darkly, "And what do you mean by that?"

Max thought about it for a second, stopping her typing and thinking carefully. After a moment, she knew exactly what she meant.

"You need to grow up, Terry."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o

Terry, who had been told countless times in his life already by his mother, teachers, and Dana to grow up, was not going to make an exception for Max and Mr. Wayne. Instead, he continued as he had been going, conducting pathetically short-lived conversations with Ryuuji after school and between classes. It wasn't even Terry's fault they didn't talk long, but Ryuuji's. To Terry's dismay, it appeared that after Terry had asked him out, all of Ryuuji's attraction for him had evaporated. He no longer sought Terry out or preoccupied himself with the state of Dana. Instead, he was cordial and chatty, and Terry could actually stand to be around him for long periods of time-although that never happened because Ryuuji had become more prone to the company of his adoring female fans and never left them for long.

Terry's pride hurt. His ego was off feeling sorry for itself, and his mother had a nerve to comment on some illness-flu, cold, stomach bug-that travelled around high schools and which Terry might have caught. What made this irritating was that his mother assumed her son was gay now, or a least bisexual, and was half worried her son wasn't sick but was maybe depressed after outing himself. Things like that happened, didn't they? She let Terry know this indirectly through stressed inferences and personal euphemisms and pretending she thought he had the flu. She hoped he had the flu, even, because she didn't want to have to hear all about her son's love life. Not that she disapproved of her son and his decisions, she just thought that since Terry had been raised through his teenage years by his father, then maybe his father would have been better prepared and not so overly mystified by the fact that his son was gay. Mrs. McGinnis was beginning to face that she just didn't know Terry anymore, did she, and how distressed that made her.

Meanwhile, Terry found himself in the very strange position of bending over backwards to get Ryuuji's attention, and managing to feel miserable about it when he failed. All his past incompetence, at life and at being Batman, hovered around the surface of his mind. His mother may have been right. Her son was feeling slighted, but he believed it was more of a blow to his ego than anything else.

Then there was a dream he had about Ryuuji, which was actually not at all what others immediately thought of when you said "dream about Ryuuji" to them. Only, Terry hadn't realised that yet, so he went ahead and proclaimed it to the world.

"Uh-huh. Yeah, Terry. Lots of people have dreams about Ryuuji. You don't have to tell me about it, really. I swear."

Terry made a face at Dana who'd spoken. She'd been in a sour mood for a while now concerning Terry and Ryuuji. She somehow wasn't all that mad at Ryuuji, though. It seemed to her that Terry had always been gay and she'd been an idiot not to notice it. Chelsea and Max, however, were all attention as usual between their box of candy, behaving more like Terry was acting a television soap rather than presenting them with a real problem. Terry swore it was the only reason they sat with him and Dana.

"Don't listen to her. Tells us all the details," encouraged Chelsea with interest that almost too genuine for comfort.

"Well, I had a dream about Ryuuji Otogi." Chelsea giggled and Terry paused to repeat to himself what he'd just said. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had the feeling he shouldn't have said anything at all. He didn't know how he was supposed to make sense and not incriminate himself further. The problem about relating dreams what that they naturally didn't communicate well. "And, in my dream, he was a robot. And that Ryuuji, the _real _Ryuuji, was this loser asian kid controlling the robot from a console back in Japan. The reason Principal Nakamura let this happen is that he's biased towards Japanese people. And then, Ryuuji, the real one, was kidnapping students and replacing them with robots, too."

Max and Chelsea look slightly disappointed. Dana looked at Terry like he was crazy.

"So, does this mean you think of Ryuuji as your boy-toy…?" asked Chelsea, trying to salvage at least something homoerotic from their expectations. Max eagerly grasped the idea.

"Yes. It's gotta be a metaphor. Who knows, maybe deep down where only Terry's subconscious can perceive it, Ryuuji is a loser asian kid."

Terry frowned at them both. "Of course. I could have told you that if you'd asked me anytime about my opinion of Ryuuji."

"Yeah, but a loser asian kid with hot sex-bots? That's insta-cool," said Max evilly. She and Chelsea scoffed and toasted each other with candies. Terry decided girls were evil incarnate, or at most a very low level of demon with nothing better to do than harass him. Ryuuji was their leader, and that showed something about him, didn't it? Terry hadn't said a slagging thing about anyone's sex-bots, either.

"Maybe Principal Nakamura is having an affair with Ryuuji. That's why he's biased," said Chelsea, happy to make things worse and then far worse for Terry. "They are replacing all the students who caught them together. Then, the dream is actually warning Terry that he's next."

"I don't think Nakamura is married, Chels," Max pointed out. "Not that the theory isn't absolutely brilliant. Or maybe the robots represent everyone Terry wants to have sex with. Tell us, Terry, was Dana replaced?"

Terry sighed and put his head in his arms. "You both just defiled my dream. Thanks."

Max laughed. "A dream about Ryuuji Otogi asks for it."

"No, screams."

"Begs."

"Demands it. With a whip."

The two girls collapsed into laughing while Terry stared woefully at the table. When he looked up again, Max and Chelsea had finally calmed down, and Dana was gone. Since there was nothing much for it, he put his head back into his arms and waited for lunch to be over.

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"Ryuuji, did you get question fifteen on the practise test? It totally blew me away. All this work has got me totally slagged."

"Sorry?" Ryuuji asked as if just noticing that Terry was speaking to him. They were in class, and while Ryuuji feigned increased competence with the other students when speaking English, for Terry he was always lost. Terry was about to the point where he desperately wanted to strangle him with a bell curve, if that were even possible.

"Question fifteen," Terry repeated, pointing to it on the screen to clarify. Ryuuji face lit up with recognition. Terry felt sick watching it. He was willing to believe Ryuuji honestly dumped all his English into his locker before getting to third hour.

"I don't know it," Ryuuji said regretfully. He pointed to his own question fifteen, which seconds before had been filled with numbers and paragraphs of explanation. "Sorry."

"I'm sure you are," said Terry, unable to conceal the sarcasm. Ryuuji only smiled and nodded.

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"Are you going to work for Mr. Wayne, today, Terry? We should talk before you go."

Terry looked up at his mother, stunned to find her at Hamilton when the last thing he'd known her to get off work for was his father's funeral. Even Max was speechless.

"Did something happen to Matt?" he asked, immediately alarmed.

"No, I just feel we should talk."

Terry shrugged and said he guessed it was all right. He was secretly dreading all chats with his mother, but there was no getting out of this one. Max knew all about it. She gave him a rather sceptical goodbye, and Terry was off and around the school with his mother.

He was struck by how much she didn't fit in at all if she wasn't there in response to some complaint about Terry's behaviour. At those times, she was all agitation and fury. Currently, she was just the agitation.

"So, how are things at school?"

"Great," said Terry slowly, motioning around him as though she should see for herself. The matter now was how to evade her questions and figuring out what it was exactly he was evading. He applied his agile Batman mind to it. He only came against a wall.

"You're doing well in class,?"

"Yeah, I guess," said Terry with a shrug. Things would be less excruciating if he went ahead and made her level with him. "But you could ask me that anytime. What's wrong, Mom?"

His mother worried her hands together as she considered what to say. Terry watched her intently, his expression soon mirroring her own as he anticipated something terrible. Maybe she lied and was furious with him for everything that had happened the past few days, but wanted to break things gently. That made Terry feel horrible. He was likely just disappointing her all over again.

The tension between them was broken by a cell phone ringing. Both seem somewhat relieved at this. Terry instinctively reached for his pocket, but his mother was already checking and mouthing the words "I need to take this, one minute". Terry nodded to her to go and leaned into some lockers while his mother disappeared into a nearby classroom. He sighed tiredly. Of course she didn't trust Terry to hear her speaking with a client. She didn't trust Terry at all, did she?

"Is that your mother?"

Terry frowned. No. Not Ryuuji. Not with his mother in the other room. She might have a heart attack.

"Yeah."

His voice betrayed him and sounded much more laid back than he really was about all this. He couldn't imagine how an introduction between the two would go. He was scared to think of it. _"Hello, I'm Ryuuji. Remember me? Your son kissed me in front of everyone at the airport. Pinned me down for a whole minute. Then we made out in the back seat of Mr. Wayne's car. And along the side of Mr. Wayne's car. Then, I'm sure Terry had inappropriate thoughts about me all night. Those are the facts. By the way, that's a lovely purse."_

Quite. His mother may never speak to him again. There was only one solution: He was going to kill Ryuuji. Right now. That ended everyone's problem.

"She's a lot better looking than my father, I'll give you that," said Ryuuji, meanwhile, unawares of Terry's inner monologue. Terry thought that it was just great that now Ryuuji also appraised his mother. Dana had merely been the beginning.

"Why are you here, Ryuuji?" asked Terry, uneasy with how the guy was able to appear at just the inopportune moment always. He wanted to ask why Ryuuji was talking to him, but he was positive Ryuuji would give him some wordy, convoluted explanation that amounted to nothing more than "just to f-k with you"-only, _hopefully_, not in the literal sense.

"Max told me."

"Why?"

"I saw you walking off with a mysterious older woman and had to investigate."

"Since when do you care who I walk off with?"

Ryuuji only grinned at the question and went to peek into the classroom. Terry pulled him back roughly before he'd wrapped his head around the door.

"Stop! I don't think she likes you," Terry lied. "I think she's scared of you."

"She won't be once she gets to know me, I'm sure."

"Ryuuji," Terry pleaded, since there was no better way of getting through to the guy when he was in a sadistic mood. Also, he suspected Ryuuji was absolutely correct, and Terry couldn't bear the idea of his mother sanctifying the guy as well.

"What, are you worried she'll like me?" asked Ryuuji, taking a step closer. Terry, now aware of what Ryuuji was capable of, immediately went on his guard. Which for Terry wasn't much, seeing as people pounce kissed him all the time. Not even wearing the Batsuit helped. Something in him was always asking for it.

"You're always so tense, Terry. It's quite admirable. It suggests a healthy level of suspicion," said Ryuuji, who cocked an arm on Terry's higher shoulder, leaning easily on Terry and the wall of lockers. He seemed perfectly relaxed despite the frozen body beside him. "But you should really learn to appreciate how you feel at this moment, your mother just a wall away and then there's me out here threatening to be all disgraceful. I've learned to appreciate that feeling, and I enjoy anything-or anyone-that arouses it. You know? "

"I'll go ahead and pretend not to, thanks," said Terry, still a little smart even when he was all nerves.

"Don't. You see, I'm giving you a chance to experience the rush for yourself. Isn't it fun?"

Terry didn't think so. He found it to be torture. Distantly he could hear his mother talking, explaining options and who else to contact. He was filled with an urgent need to do something, anything, and yet he didn't move. Ryuuji was still talking to himself, something about dice and gambling. It was all some long metaphor, but Terry honestly didn't care. He failed to notice the hand Ryuuji was waving in front of his face for several seconds.

"Come back Terry, come back," said Ryuuji mockingly. His face was mere inches from Terry's own and he was smirking at him. The closeness drew Terry into a sudden impulse. He was furious with Ryuuji for mocking him and turning him down, ignoring him and messing with his head. There was one logical step of what to do about it, only it really wasn't logical. It was something like the only thing Terry could think to do, and he supposed that had a lot to do with being eighteen years old and immeasurably stupid concerning common investigative technique. He forcefully closed the distance between him and Ryuuji because he was angry enough at Ryuuji for that, and Ryuuji responded by pushing him into the lockers with surprising strength.

How to rationalise this? He couldn't. Terry kept assuring himself that it was all a silly game of Ryuuji's and because it was all about risk, they were sure to stop before his mother saw them. After all, Terry had not embarrassed Ryuuji in front of his father. It wouldn't be fair otherwise. That was what Ryuuji had been getting at. It took the guy five hours of exposition to get to a slagging point, and Terry didn't have that sort of patience.

Also, it wasn't like kissing Ryuuji was a _bad _thing, truly. He wasn't a bad kisser. In fact, it was immensely enjoyable and made Terry aware of how much he was missing in basically dating the same girl since middle school. It was a horrible moment for Terry to admit that to himself, but he had learned to work beyond the sinking feeling years ago. Also, while Ryuuji may have positioned himself, Terry had still agreed to the proposal. In Ryuuji's mind, he likely felt he'd been proven right, and Terry had no idea if he had. He just didn't know what else to do.

Because Ryuuji was shorter in their position, Terry instinctively reached up to run his fingers through the boy's hair. Ryuuji grabbed his arms to stop him, murmuring something about not messing with his hair, bitch, and Terry had to settle with grasping the small of Ryuuji's back. He purposely tried to ignore how obviously not feminine it felt, but he also didn't mind so much. It was Ryuuji, he wasn't a girl, and there was no point pretending he was, even if he did vaguely look like Dana. That was just the hair.

Soon Terry's position transformed from a mildly to an undoubtedly compromising one, and it gave him a surge of anxious energy and desperation. He'd begun pulling up Ryuuji's shirt in the back, letting his fingers brush the warm skin and trace the bony line of Ryuuji's spine. Everything he touched was smooth and hot, part of a burning Ryuuji that could easily consume him. Ryuuji's right hand rested heavily in Terry's belt loops, making him nervous his pants would begin to slip if Ryuuji leaned a little further into him. The other arm remained innocently wrapped around Terry's shoulders, seeing as Ryuuji hadn't bothered to move it anywhere else.

It was in this position that Terry's mother found then, Terry just beginning to work on Ryuuji's jawbone. Max turned the corner at about the same time and stopped dead.

"Terry!" they both said in unison, highly alarmed. Terry froze guiltily, and became very preoccupied with watching the rounded end of Ryuuji's right collar bone. He could still see it as Ryuuji collapsed into silent laughter, possibly wicked cackles, in his shoulder. He took a moment to compose himself, and even then he couldn't stop grinning as he turned to Terry's mother and held out his hand. Terry noted bitterly how neither witness had bothered to yell at Ryuuji about the scene.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. McGinnis," said Ryuuji politely, letting go of Terry and taking the few steps require to reach her. They'd been making out right next to the door, so she had gotten an excellent view of the proceedings. Terry hated trying to think of how it had struck her. It was his slagging _mother_, of all people. "I'm Ryuuji Otogi, a classmate of Terry's. I don't believe we've met."

Terry's mother took Ryuuji's hand in an automatic fashion. Her face was frozen in an expression of pure shock. While Terry knew she was his mother and cared for him no matter what, he was suddenly very scared for himself. Her reaction was terrible and didn't not give him any hope.

"Are you the same as before?" asked his mother. "Terry's friend from the airport?"

The way she said friend showed Terry there was some blatant denial going on in his mother's mind at that moment.

"That I am," said Ryuuji, sounding absolutely thrilled she had made the connection. "What brings you to Hamilton High-our humble home if you listen to the computer science teacher. She likes to believe we all live in our lockers, and that mine was imported specially from Japan. It's why she gives us so much homework, I think."

Against everything good and fair in the world, this was exactly the sort of thing Terry's mother found funny. She couldn't help laughing, and that caused her to relax. Max and Terry both watched in awe as Ryuuji charmed his mother, bringing her totally to her ease. Terry found it unbelievable. Forget that Mr. Wayne had told him that unbelievable was a word the true Batman never used.

"Wow, Ryuuji, you're really something. I'll admit I wasn't sure what to expect from my son's boyfriend. Shows how much I know." She turned to Terry. "How long were you hiding him from me before you came out?"

Terry grabbed his neck embarrassed. He tried to figure a way not to sound cheap, but nothing came.

"Well, actually, we never dated," Terry said, giving up. His mother looked scandalised.

"Then what was…?" she couldn't bring herself to finish the question. It occurred to her that maybe she just didn't want to know. Behind her, Ryuuji found it to be spectacularly funny and laughed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I own not.

Steaming fresh off the keypad, a fourth chapter. Be jubliant.

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"Wow, Terry. Who knew that somewhere in all that manly-man, me-want-all-the-pretty-girls attitude, there was a gay dude just waiting to claw his way out?"

"Shut the f-k up."

"No, I'm serious," said Max speaking in a very unserious manner. "It was like turning the corner to find out they were filming gay porn in your school, except you knew the actors. I swear. You both looked ready to start-"

"Max! _Shut up_," said Terry loudly before she could get into further detail. A group of underclassmen girls nearby giggled.

He'd stopped asking himself what would Batman do. It didn't have the same implication when applied to his now very obvious-to himself as well as everyone else-physical attraction for Ryuuji Otogi. He'd rescued a man the night before from drowning in the bay after being dropped there by sadistic Jokers who may or may not have known he couldn't swim. However, if asked, Terry could hardly remember how he'd managed it, or where it was, or very much else. In fact, Mr. Wayne had asked, because Terry had nearly crashed the Batmobile into a pile-driver, and Terry had only shrugged at him and given a bad excuse he'd forgot as soon as he said it. His concentration had been scragged earlier by an hour long lecture from his mother about relationships for all the wrong reasons and the hazy terrain that was friends with benefits. She'd gotten off early just for him, though Terry failed to appreciate the sentiment.

Then, of course, he'd broken up with Dana.

Dana hadn't been too happy about that, and no promise from Mr. Wayne that they'd be back together in a month could make Terry ever believe they would. She cried, said she should have known, and grudgingly gave her best wishes to Ryuuji and him. Then, Terry had had to tell her that he and Ryuuji weren't together, which was a difficult point for just about everyone to wrap their heads around. If Terry was breaking up with Dana because of Ryuuji, why wasn't he with Ryuuji?

In class, Terry had struggled to keep from grabbing Ryuuji and demanding to know what the guy wanted. He'd already lost Terry his trustworthiness, sexual identity, and girlfriend of four years. There wasn't much else Ryuuji could humanly take from him. He wanted to beat Ryuuji over the head with a text book and demand to know all the particulars of attempting to kill one's own father, but knowing his reason-defying sexual impulses, he probably just end up making-out with Ryuuji right there in the classroom, and that didn't accomplish anything unless the math teacher decided to make an example of economics by charging admission. She'd probably get enough money to retire and leave a legacy for six generations. According to Max, if he and Ryuuji actually became an item, they were sure to win as the hottest couple in school at the senior prom, if only for all the public make-out sessions (ignoring the fact that there had actually only been two, and the first had really just been one drawn out kiss for the greater good).

Terry only felt miserable. It was possible he could have felt more miserable, like if Nelson had started jabbing him. But, Nelson held back. This was either because he was scared of angering a gay Terry, or because since Terry was only ever gay with Ryuuji and all the girls adored Ryuuji, it was social suicide to ridicule him as it also implied something of Ryuuji's standards. Terry wasn't at all thankful for this. He could have used a little incrimination from someone other than Mr. Wayne or Max or his mother. Those three were starting to repeat themselves.

"Hey, Ter," said Blade coming aside him in the hall. "How's it going?"

Terry shrugged. He hated how it was suddenly fashionable to call him Ter, and he was sure as hell not used to it. Also, a lot more girls invited themselves to hanging out with him at lunch and on the way to class. He was slowly and entirely by accident developing his own little entourage of girls who felt comfortable around him because, hell, he was gay and Ryuuji liked him. It wasn't nearly as cool as how he'd dreamed developing an entourage of girls would happen to him. Girls he'd never spoken to in his life, who had been too cool to look at him, now stopped him in the halls and asked him nicely to carry their books (a chore Ryuuji was never relegated to performing, by the way, since unlike him, Terry was much larger and muscular) or to walk with them and three other friends to next hour.

Talking often with Max had become difficult because she couldn't stand Terry's other company. He had tried to shake them on several occasions, but since half the student body was female and a majority of the females carried Ryuuji up at the status of a demi-god with Terry something like his high priest, there was no chance of escape for long. Terry had been forced to accept the girls as a fact of life, and Max had been forced to getting used to calling him a lot more than seeing him.

"So yeah, this Jill person would not shut up talking to me in English class today," it was lunch time, Ryuuji was in class, and Terry was trapped with all the fan girls that settled for him in absence of their precious Ryuuji, "and I was totally sending her vibes to leave me alone. But, this girl is like dense or something…." Terry didn't know who was talking, nor did he care. Slowly, he was deadening inside to everyone around him and wished very much that Max was there, Dana was still his girlfriend, and Ryuuji Otogi didn't exist. He stabbed violently at a tomato on his lunch plate and felt sorry for himself forever.

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In celebration of Terry's ruinous circumstance, Ryuuji had started hitting on him with increased vigour. Apparently all it took was for Terry to dump Dana and give up on life, and Ryuuji was contented. Terry didn't plan to ask Ryuuji out anytime soon, though. He still had his original distrust of the guy, and suspected Ryuuji to tease him until the end of time. It likely would have made things easier if he and Ryuuji were a couple, but for that reason alone Ryuuji was bound to taunt him and say no. Terry didn't think he could take another rejection. When Ryuuji ignored him for three days, it was extremely difficult to work the case, and Mr. Wayne made sure Terry knew it.

Meanwhile, third hour had become a level of hell.

"Now, say you have a standard deck of cards; what is the probability, without replacements, of drawing a red face card on your fourth out of five draws?"

Terry frowned at the equations on his class console. This math wasn't making any sense. Worse, there was the flashing orange button in the corner of his screen.

_Is this class boring you?_

Terry nodded since he was sitting right next to Ryuuji. The guy could see him.

_Then you're going to fail._

Terry shrugged.

_You're so lazy you can't type._

Terry made a motion that suggested "…_and_?"

_You're going to fail_

Terry shrugged again, since he'd been pulling late nights recently, and this class made him sleepy even when he wasn't already exhausted. Ryuuji was right about that much, at least. He seemed quiet now, so Terry went back to dozing. He almost successfully made it into a fantasy about speaking his newly learned Chinese to the grouchy Asian couple who lived next door and were very rude because no-one on their floor spoke Chinese. Terry imagined himself putting them in their place once and for all, to the rejoicing of the entire condominium. He was accepting everyone's gratitude with food down in the kitchen, when he noticed the orange rectangle flickering again. Drowsily, he clicked it.

_Don't fall asleep_

Terry put his head back on his desk and ignored the warning. A few moments later, there was a sharp pain in his arm. He bolted awake.

"Owe! You slagging _pinched _me. What the hell is wrong with you?"

The teacher looked up crossly from her lecture notes to Terry and Ryuuji.

"Mr. McGinnis, what seems to be the problem?"

Ryuuji pretended she'd been addressing him.

"Sorry, ma'am. He was falling asleep. I pinched him. We pinch in class when I was younger. You pinch a person next to you and they pinch someone. Terry is supposed to pinch Alex."

For some sadistic reason, the teacher was amused and insisted that it would help improve Terry's grades if someone kept him awake. Then she did a one-eighty and reprimanded Terry harshly for having the nerve to doze with his grade how it was. Did he simply not want to graduate with the rest of his year?

"How the hell do you do that?" demanded Terry catching up with Ryuuji after school. Ryuuji, who had gone to his next class and not seen Terry in the past two hours, didn't know what Terry was talking about.

"How do I do what?"

"Talk yourself out of everything. It's not fair."

At this, Ryuuji nodded knowingly. He seem accustomed to the subject. "Oh, it's perfectly fair. Want to know how?"

"How?" Terry growled.

"I usually come up with a way to talk myself out before I do anything," which sounded as pathetic as it did impossible, but Terry waited for Ryuuji to finish talking. "My decision to prepare myself trumping your decision to do nothing is not unfairness. Sure, maybe five-percent of the time it's spontaneity, but otherwise I'm just very boring and plan ahead. Do you wish it was more dramatic, that four winds speak in my ears and such and tell me what to say?"

"No," said Terry, as if that was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard.

"Then there's nothing special. Practise is really all you need. And not being stupid helps."

"And you think I'm stupid, don't you?" asked Terry with a sigh, since it was a large part of how he figured Ryuuji viewed him.

"Sometimes, yes. But I didn't mean you when I said that. Don't take it personally."

Terry wondered if he felt better or not knowing that Ryuuji only thought he was stupid sometimes. He couldn't decide on which, and was interrupted by Ryuuji prompting an arm on his nearest shoulder.

"I want to go somewhere," said Ryuuji whimsically, leading Terry across to the parking lot, "and by go somewhere, I mean make-out. We should go public, you know, just find a spot in the middle of the quad and see if anyone dares chase us off for PDA."

"What makes you think I would agree to that?"

"It seems to coincide with your first brilliant advance at the airport, and I can been accommodating."

Terry shook his head slowly. "No, I didn't think that through. Seriously. I don't think I'll be launching onto you in public places again."

"Are you sure?"

"I hope so."

Ryuuji grinned and continued walking, still well-attached to Terry. Terry was maybe a little stunned to be talking and strolling so almost-normally with Ryuuji, albeit the talking was about making-out for audiences, however normal discussing that could be. He thought of Mr. Wayne for a second, not right away sure why. Probably Mr. Wayne struck him as having never have had a similar conversation in his entire Batman career, thus showing the dramatic distance between their two crusading styles. That, and whenever Terry tried to imagine Mr. Wayne as Batman, he imagined the man to still be around a thousand years old beneath the mask, regardless of how much Terry knew better.

"Hey, did your father ever find out about the airport thing?"

"Why?" asked Ryuuji with a slight flicker of displeasure over his face. "Are you worried what my father thinks? That's my job."

"Well, maybe that's why you got me in trouble with my mom."

Ryuuji laughed, much like he had when Mrs. McGinnis had walk in on them in the hall. "Nope, I completely forgot about her. It was some of that five-percent spontaneity. You see how well that works. Did you really get in trouble?"

"Yes. She keeps lecturing me and looking disappointed."

"Really? That's funny. Do you want me to apologise?"

"Not really, no."

"Do you want me to go to her and promise to marry you and move to France and adopt little Ethiopian children?"

"No," said Terry more firmly. Ryuuji looked disappointed. "They have to be Vietnamese and we've got to move to Paris."

"I said France."

"_Texas_."

"You're lying."

"What? About the Vietnamese, the moving to Paris, or about Paris, Texas?"

"Ch'. Your mother's really picky, Terry."

"Yeah, too bad for you."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooo

Terry, as suggested by Mr. Wayne long before, tried desperately to find anything he knew Ryuuji was interested in and was preferably affordable. Nothing came to mind. He settled therefore on the inane. The next day, he showed Ryuuji how the commuter lifts worked by accompanying him in one. It wasn't the best plan, having started in a highly impromptu manner following a chatty speculation on Ryuuji's part over how Domino didn't have commuter lifts, and Terry responding to it with an invitation to show them to him.

And for some odd reason, Ryuuji had accepted. Terry was still trying to figure that one out even as he bought them both tickets.

This could have been worse, Terry told himself repeatedly when they ended up without seats for several stops or when someone boarded with an obnoxious smell. Ryuuji, who drove or was driven most places to avoid public transportation, found the lifts quaint, which may or may not have been a good sign.

Knowing this wasn't his most brilliant arrangement to date, if in fact he had ever made any brilliant arrangements in his entire career as the Batman, Terry spent the whole trip praying Jokerz didn't break in. He briefly explained to Ryuuji all about how unsafe the lifts actually were. Ryuuji, whose greatest ambition was to give Terry an ulcer, found it to be vicariously thrilling, lamenting how transportation wasn't nearly as lively in Domino.

"Do you think if Jokerz come after us, we'll get to see the resident vigilante, the Batman?" Ryuuji asked, receiving uncomfortable looks from the lift's other passengers who were certain he was trying to jinx them. Terry, for reasons only he knew, merely shrugged in answer.

"Lets hope that doesn't happen. You're making everyone nervous."

"Well, then everyone, I apologise," said Ryuuji sincerely to the rest of the lift. Then, he whispered to Terry, "but what exactly do the Jokerz do to people they catch on here? I haven't got a credit on me. Would that make them angry?"

Terry couldn't answer. He didn't know the answer, for one. Also, he was mildly horrified.

"Wait. You don't carry credits? Really?" asked Terry, having never heard of such a thing.

"Not to school. What good are they to me there?"

Terry just kept looking at Ryuuji like he'd lost his mind. He didn't know what the Jokerz would do, he finally confessed, people tended to carry credits, and that usually appeased them. They may just pie his face if he was broke and laugh, who knew? Ryuuji thought it sounded horrible. He quickly formulated a solution.

"You should give me some credits. Just in case."

Terry didn't think it was so great a solution. "What? No. They're mine."

"But they will _pie me_."

"Maybe they'll just squirt you with water."

"That isn't any better. How about you just give me one credit?"

"Only one?" asked Terry with a small sigh to himself, slowly giving in.

"Or three. Or fifty. Are you feeling generous?"

"Not particularly," said Terry, thought he was already reaching for his wallet. He removed a credit and held it out to Ryuuji. "There, there's one credit. Try not to spend it all on one Joker, okay?"

Ryuuji was elated. He plucked the card out of Terry's hand and slipped it into the front left pocket of his jeans. "Brilliant. Now if I'm robbed, there will be a nice rumour about how I hardly carry money around. Hopefully it discourages people."

Terry only shook his head and glanced out the window, beginning to wish Ryuuji would stop chatting so easily about Gotham's greatest fear and eyesore. He made everything sound ridiculous and the whole lift was starting to feel insulted.

The two remained aboard the lift, to the dismay of other passengers, until the end of the line at a long walkway just below the upper mid-city. A long stairwell went the rest of the distance up to a sunny platform that was a bus stop at one side and narrow walkway leading to a train station at the other. Ryuuji insisted they go there as soon as Terry mentioned it's existence.

It had been windy all day, which mean the wind was incredibly strong in the upper mid-city since there were fewer buildings for it to travel through. Here, up so high, as high as you could get on public transportation, Gotham transformed. Since the industrial fashion of the century was to go up more than out, the caps of most downtown buildings were decorative and greatly mismatched their bases. It was common to have one entrance to a building at the very bottom and more entrances scattered further up. It was also common for a building to change purpose halfway through at each level there was an entrance, making Gotham a stratified vertical habitat of expense and popularity increasing with altitude.

The upper mid-city was particularly different from most other levels of Gotham. It only existed downtown and was were Terry imagined people like Ryuuji spent a great deal of time, seeing as it was brighter, cleaner and full of entrances to fine shops, restaurants, and nearly every penthouse in the city. Ryuuji lived in one of these penthouses four blocks away, but it was difficult to walk there so high up where all platforms were almost exclusively roads. This was a sign enough that you didn't travel the upper mid-city without a vehicle.

"So how do we get back down?" asked Ryuuji, leaning precariously over a railing and peering down, trying catch a glimpse of what he called Gotham's "forest floor".

"We go back downstairs and wait for the next lift in two hours. Everything's synchronised to the lift. The bus and train here wait for people getting off the lift. We missed both of those for you to look around."

"So you're telling me you just stranded us up here."

Terry shrugged and sat down on the ground next to the station building. "It was your idea."

"You should have told me better."

"I did. At every stop on the way up here." Terry sighed and leaned back so his face was in the shade of the awning. He mentally prepared for a long, boring wait. Ryuuji, meanwhile, looked like a strong gust of wind would take him right off the railing and into the highway below. "You just ignored me and kept asking about Jokerz."

"So? They interest me. You're the only person I'm acquainted with who would know anything about Jokerz, so you get all my questions."

"Thanks for making me of some interest, then, I suppose. I'm probably the envy of every girl in school. Yay…."

"Sure you are," said Ryuuji with his knowing smirk. "That'll show them and their puffy-haired ways." He motioned around his head, but lost balance and nearly toppled over. Terry was sitting up immediately to rush over to him, but Ryuuji had already caught himself laughing.

"Ha! That was close, right?"

Terry frowned. "Get down from there. You're going to get yourself killed."

"Of course not. I just won't let go with both hands again. Adaptability is key."

"Get down or I'll pull you down." Terry said this sincerely, which ended Ryuuji's fun.

"Sure you would," said Ryuuji bitterly, but jumped away from the railing all the same. Terry was the understood stronger of the two, and Ryuuji probably did not want to be involved in a struggle that would disrupt his hairstyle. Instead, being every bit melodramatic, he collapsed haughtily next to Terry and didn't say anything more.

"You know, Max thought I was a member of the Jokerz once," said Terry after a few moments of silence to get Ryuuji to talk. He was by now too aware of how epic Ryuuji's silences could be, and there was no-one else to talk to. "She tried to hunt me down."

This didn't seem to interest the annoyed Ryuuji much. He only nodded and quietly walked his fingers over Terry's up-folded knee. There was small hole in the fabric from falling down one time or another, and Ryuuji worked on making it larger.

"I used to get in fights with Jokerz," Terry added, assuming Ryuuji had no excuse not to at least hear him. If he said something interesting enough, Ryuuji wouldn't be able to help but to chime in. "What you get for having a hot girlfriend and everything."

Ryuuji was tracing circles into Terry's knee now, looking perfectly bored. Terry sighed over his failure to interest Ryuuji in any way whatsoever. He was going to tell Ryuuji to just go back and stand on the railing again if that was fun, but Ryuuji spoke.

"Dana told me your father was murdered by Jokerz."

Which wasn't true. Terry's father was murdered by Derek Power's personal assistant, but Terry would have sounded paranoid if he told anyone the truth. He let Ryuuji believe what Dana had said.

"Yeah," said Terry, keeping a neutral tone. "They traced me back to him. I must've pissed them off, done something stupid. Whatever. I should have been there, but I stormed out before they showed up."

There was a long silence. "Hn," said Ryuuji only, reaching himself over to pat Terry on the head in an strange consolatory gesture. Part of Terry was convinced it wasn't meant to console at all.

"Is it still bad for you, losing your father?" asked Ryuuji. by his tone, he could've been asking about Jokerz or homework assignments.

Terry shrugged. "Yeah," he said. "I mean, why wouldn't it be?"

"Who knows. Maybe you'd come to terms or something," said Ryuuji with the faint trace of a smirk. "I for one wouldn't be so devastated over my father. Jokerz can have him. Swap face painting secrets and jokes over a garbage fire."

"And you'd just give him away?" asked Terry, disbelieving. "A old crazy man?"

"Yeah," said Ryuuji with a shrug, sounding as if he already had. He quickly brought his arm up to eye level with Terry and pointed at a sharp roofed building, all angles and an apex. "Change of subject: What's that?"

Terry shook his head reproachfully, but looked. "A very expensive hotel with a night club at the top. It's got some weird name that changes every other week. Used to be called Club Gotham, but Club Gotham went bankrupt."

"Oh. And what's over there? Way back there?"

"Old Gotham."

"And there?"

"Gotham Games, being investigated for illegal stakes."

This seemed to amuse Ryuuji more than anything. "Hm. Not much inspired for names here, are we?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everything here is Gotham-this, this-that-Gotham."

"It's like that in all cities."

"Yeah, for public buildings. Club Gotham just sounds silly."

"Which is why they went bankrupt."

Ryuuji laughed, and Terry was relieved that it wasn't at him, because it was a very hateful, superior laugh. The sound of it put Terry instinctively on guard, but more than that it succeeded to irritate him. He wanted to snap at Ryuuji over it, but he couldn't think of what to say.

"You should be funny more often," Ryuuji suggested enthusiastically once he'd gotten beyond his loathing of Club Gotham. "Not so gloomy and annoyed. You take everything with such seriousness."

"A little maturity is not a bad thing."

"Yes, but that's not it, and you're just playing dumb," said Ryuuji, turning so that he could sit himself on the balls of his feet facing Terry. He held Terry's knee to keep his balance. "There's too much seriousness all the time. It's mostly how your face is lain out, how you treat everything I've ever said like it's important. I'm not flattered. I'm insulted. In fact," he added, waving a finger disapprovingly, "it's partly why I turned you down last week."

"Because I'm so serious and mature for my age?" asked Terry sarcastically.

"No, because it was so serious and calculated and mean," said Ryuuji, sounding annoyed and giving Terry a stern look that rivalled that of Mr. Wayne's. "Your strategy makes no sense. Make a move on Ryuuji this day. Ignore him for Dana. Hit on Ryuuji this day. Ignore him for absolutely nothing whatsoever. Ask Ryuuji out this day. Ignore him again most likely. I was feeling very made-fun-of, very picked upon. I decided to beat you there on the last one."

"I did not do that," said Terry disbelievingly, denying it to the stubborn end. He refused to accept that his inability to make any progress with Ryuuji was mostly his own fault. Ryuuji over-thought things.

"If you think so, then you are not at all in touch with your signals. I was confused. Admittedly, I did stir you up in front of your mother, but that was payback. I'm vindictive. I've sort of now accepted we're those friends who kinda get along and occasionally make out in public places, and only because you're a weirdo."

"I'm not a weirdo. And what kind of friends are those?"

Ryuuji only shrugged and made a doubtful face. "I was assuming it was an American thing. I think I saw it on tv once."

"You're ridiculous."

"_You _are. I don't go around jumping Kaiba Seto in international airports for no reason."

"Kaiba Seto?"

"It's a Domino expression. Means: Very rich man, with a big company and an obsession with children's games, who could easily have your head baked in manatee fat fried baby harp seal on a platter for nothing."

"I thought it was the name of KaibaCorp's CEO."

"The man, the legend. If you were an ugly guy, I would have exacted a terrible revenge for the ages."

"And you call me the weirdo?"

"Always. In Domino, I'm normal. In Domino, you're still a weirdo."

"Would you believe me if I didn't intended to come off as a weirdo, then?"

"Partly, except you were so good at it."

Terry rolled his eyes and got up. There wasn't any arguing with Ryuuji, not because Ryuuji was a rhetoric master, but because of the absurd statements he argued with. It was like arguing with his little brother if his littler brother had been Japanese and gay and rudely sarcastic, which, considering:

"Are you gay?"

Ryuuji had absolutely no idea where the question had come from. His annoyed look told Terry so much. "Are we playing truth or dare now? I pick dare."

"I dare you to tell me the truth if you are gay or not."

"Clever," said Ryuuji, implying Terry was anything but. "I am. I suppose now's where you act all confident and tell me you're not like I even care, and then you realize crushingly that I don't give a damn about your orientation, that I'm still going to touch you because you like it."

"I wasn't planning to say anything like that," said Terry, laughing, though a bit uncomfortably. He had no intention of saying anything Ryuuji had suggested. What bothered him was Ryuuji broadcasting it as public knowledge that Terry _liked _it when they touched and did things Terry still couldn't mentally see himself doing. He did, he supposed, like it, and that was why he kept at it. Ryuuji's phrasing, however, irritated his belief that he was not in control, that apparently some gay or make-out addicted other-being possessed him, and then he couldn't help himself. But, no, Ryuuji had to say that Terry liked it when Ryuuji touched him, which wasn't the same sort of safe, distant phrasing Terry snugly planted himself into when he tried to rationalise his actions. He could half-heartedly refer to himself as gay and attracted to Ryuuji, but to choose it for himself, to enjoy kissing Ryuuji not only by an uncontrollable consequence but because he wanted to enjoy it and sought it out, that was too much.

And that he liked to kiss Ryuuji was easier even to say then he liked to touch Ryuuji, or taste Ryuuji, hold Ryuuji, or anything-else Ryuuji. Kiss was general and innocuous. He most certainly wished to disagree with Ryuuji saying that he liked _Ryuuji _to touch _him_, to taste him, hold him, et cetera. It put power in Ryuuj and a helplessness in Terry, which was the most uncomfortable feeling of all. He didn't care that Ryuuji might say something like that for the same reasons Terry said similar things to himself about Ryuuji. Looking at himself as controlled by Ryuuji in any way rapidly involved Terry more deeply than he preferred to consider himself involved.

"Earth to Terry McGinnis, are you planning to return to us any time soon?" asked Ryuuji mockingly, clearly oblivious to the crisis he'd just introduced to Terry's whole self-universe. Ryuuji had only been kidding as always, saying things in ways that were the most abrupt for droll amusement, but telling himself this didn't make Terry forget it any faster.

"Yes, I'm right here," said Terry, waving Ryuuji's hand out of his face. For an instant, his fingers brushed something, a finger or back of a hand, and everything inside him was awkwardly aware of it.

Terry had to be acting on some self-deluding pretence. This wasn't what he usually felt towards Ryuuji. He hadn't been like this when Ryuuji was busy investigating his knee, or crammed beside him on the lift. Had the small phrase, hardly considered by it's speaker, altered him so much? And if so, why and why didn't Ryuuji notice?

"Well, right here I am as well, and right here isn't very interesting," said Ryuuji as he pulled out a cell phone. "I'm going to call my chauffeur."

"You have a chauffeur?"

"For now. I can never remember his name."

"And why didn't you call him earlier?"

"I consider it a sign of defeat if I need to call him."

"Why?"

"I need to get to know Gotham. After my father's died, I might stay here."

"Your father's dying?"

"Sure," said Ryuuji, lifting the phone to his ear. "He's old."

"What's he got?"

Ryuuji shrugged. "He's just old. Old people die. Why are you so curious all the sudden?"

Terry would have given a half vindictive answer concerning Ryuuji inundating him with questions on the lift earlier, but Ryuuji had begun speaking to someone in rapid Japanese. This perked Terry's attention as he proved to himself that he was still hopeless at Japanese. He was also suspicious about Ryuuji having a Japanese-speaking chauffeur.

"When he going to be here?" asked Terry once Ryuuji hung up.

"Never, considering I just fired him."

"What? Why?" asked Terry, even more ashamed with his Japanese that he hadn't had any idea of what was going on.

"He says he's hung over still from last night. Paxton Power's chauffeur is a lush, and I suppose he was being polite to drink as well. But, I wasn't out so late that he'd still be sick, so he's fired. He was hoping I wouldn't call. Now he can go complain to Power's chauffer."

"Yours and Power's chauffeurs? Do chauffeurs congregate on Thursday nights or something?"

Ryuuji laughed. "Why, were you not invited?"

"No, I wasn't."

"Well," said Ryuuji. "I dunno about the chauffeur social scene you're clearly not cool enough for, but last night I was busy resolving things with Paxton Powers." He sighed deeply and was overcome by an obviously false despair. "I've given up on dating CEOs. I really have. I swear."

Terry was a little alarmed by this. Sure, Ryuuji was gorgeous and flirty and so many other attractive things, but Ryuuji had always occupied Terry's thoughts as perpetually single since Terry knew no-one gay who could date him. That Ryuuji had had a boyfriend, and that it had been Paxton Powers of all people, was something Terry would never have imagined. "You were with Paxton Powers?"

"Yes, how long do you honestly think someone like me stays single?" asked Ryuuji, using bragging as always as his natural inflection. Then, he grinned. "Are you jealous? That would be adorable and so like you."

"Of course not," said Terry, who didn't currently feel overwhelming jealous or upset, just generally overwhelmed all over.

"It would also be so like you to deny it."

"Shut up. You and I hardly know each other."

"Ah, but you want to know me. Or do you also deny that?"

"Not if you're just playing with me. I have my damn dignity."

"So you admit it?"

"Yes."

Ryuuji looked at him appraisingly a moment, a near-smile on his lips and complete belittling laughter in his eyes. Terry was absolutely convinced Ryuuji was forever toying with him. There was no doubt, and yet he had to get closer just to get Ryuuji out of his life. He had to pin him for attempted murder and then go back to being normal again and less conflicted. Being conflicted was no fun and stressed everything.

"You're definitely weird," said Ryuuji after a moment. "You don't even know."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo

"So, want me to call a taxi?" Terry asked after twenty minutes of silence between them in which Ryuuji had migrated back to the railing with a complaint about Terry being boring. Ryuuji must've shrugged in answer because Terry couldn't see him. Terry had moved to the opposite side of the building cast in shadow to escape the heat of the sun that always seemed too close the higher one got in Gotham. No-one in their right mind would be up at the station at this time. He couldn't think why they were still here. Maybe forty minutes had already passed since they'd arrived. Forty slow minutes. There was still so much longer to wait. Terry couldn't stand to think about it. He hated waiting more than anything.

Ryuuji hadn't moved out of the sun. Terry could hear him shifting sometimes as he leaned against the railing on the other side of the platform. He was passing a die through is fingers, and once or twice he dropped it. When that happened, Ryuuji swore in Japanese and refused to pick it up. Terry was starting to wonder how many dice Ryuuji had on his person and, most importantly, where they were kept.

Eventually, Terry went back downstairs. Ryuuji caught up at the bottom and began asking where they were going. Terry, who wasn't sure but couldn't stand doing nothing, shrugged. He was saved having to answer when his cell phone rang.

"I've got to go. Mr. Wayne calls," said Terry. "I suppose you can arrange a taxi yourself?"

"Yes, although it's very unromantic to just ditch me here."

"I thought Dana told you everything about me. What did you expect?"

Ryuuji rolled his eyes and had begun to dial the number of a taxi service as Terry ran the other direction. He'd parked Mr. Wayne's car in a garage a several blocks away, involving a lot of stairs to reach, and so expedience demanded he run. His phone, however, rang once more. He groaned and answered it at a jog.

"Hello, this is Ryuuji Otogi calling to let you know I only have one credit on me and the taxi costs significantly more than that."

"Slagging hell," Terry snapped, stopping to look back. There was Ryuuji on the phone waving at him.

"Also, wow. You run really fast," Ryuuji added. "And listen to you, you sound so composed. Not a single pant or anything."

"Just shut up and get over here, it's a long walk," Terry ordered and hung up. He dialled Mr. Wayne and prepared for the worse.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooo

Terry had been forced to take Ryuuji with him. Mr. Wayne had been forced to accommodate Ryuuji. Things were not going well. By the time a car arrived at Wayne mansion to pick Ryuuji up, Terry was flying over Gotham in costume and on the job, intercepting drug imports, helping people out of their collapsed condominium, and checking in on Mad Stan to make sure he wasn't preparing for another rampage. The night had reached its lull where he'd started picking off the miscellaneous Jokerz gangs, when Mr. Wayne finally opened his communication line. Knowing nothing good was coming for him or had been coming for him for the past few weeks, Terry prepared for a thorough, self-esteem shattering reprimand.

"You already know that you should never have brought Ryuuji Otogi to my house."

No question why had he brought Ryuuji. No congratulation for actually being with Ryuuji. No apology for making him hurry over like there was a doomsday plot ready to go off in fifteen minutes when really he was supposed to track a drug shipment to the inner city that had been moved up an hour. No, nothing positive for the Batman protégé. Instead, Terry was suppose ignore all the had done tonight in order to reflect on himself and his wrong decision until he felt terrible enough to learn from it.

"You could have compromised everything bringing him here," said Mr. Wayne. "Obviously you still severely underestimate Ryuuji Otogi. That's dangerous."

Terry wanted to say something, something good. He always had a comeback, didn't he? Only now the thing he would have said would be to ask how did he really know Ryuuji was so terrible? And he knew the answer. He misjudged Ryuuji, he was being tricked, and if Mr. Wayne wasn't a thousand years old, he'd pull Terry off the investigation and work on it himself. Still, it was hard to see what was diabolically threatening about the guy. Sure, he was an arrogant, smart-ass, son of a bitch, but Terry had yet to see anything worse than that. Even if Ryuuji wanted to murder his father, why should the Batman care? People killed off older relatives all the time in secret inheritance plots or out of sheer frustration. When they were caught, it was all over the news for a day, and then it was over. Terry would never have known it happened before the news got a hold of the story, and he wouldn't have really cared anyway. It wouldn't have been any of the Batman's business, to fight crime in people's personal lives. It was hard to believe Mr. Wayne was such a truly idealistic crusader for fighting injustice and crime wherever it presented itself.

"There's something I don't know about Ryuuji's father, isn't there?" asked Terry after a long moment in which Mr. Wayne assumed he was reflecting on the error of his decision-making ways.

"Why?"

"This whole investigation strikes me as a little strange."

"And you're asking now?"

"Better late than never," said Terry with a sigh. "What's so important about the old man anyway?"

"I can't trust you with that information."

"And why not? I'm stuck right in the middle of all of this. I need to know."

"You don't need to know yet. Trust me."

"And how am I supposed to trust you when you don't trust me?"

"Terry, this is not the time."

"I'm not going to drop it."

"Yes you are. Gotham Games' vault is being been broken into. You better get over there and do something."

Terry sighed and made sure it was very loud and obnoxious in the communicator before he turned around towards the gambling district. "Fine," he grumbled. For a moment, he remembered Ryuuji pointing Gotham Games out to him. That got him thinking about Ryuuji's dice and how he went on and on about risks. It wouldn't be surprising if Ryuuji spent time there, gambling alongside Gotham's criminal and business elite. Did it make Ryuuji look more worthy of condemnation? No, not really. Ryuuji had not known what the building was, anyway, unless he was lying to Terry. Which was too likely to make Terry proud. And knowing himself, Terry decided that Ryuuji Otogi, if truly as horrible as Mr. Wayne said, had him entirely fooled. It was a crushing realisation, Terry being the Batman and all. He was supposed to know better.

"Maybe Max should investigate Ryuuji?" said Terry later when he'd returned to the Batcave. Mr. Wayne watched him darkly.

"What are you talking about?"

Terry took a breath and prepared himself to explain. He'd been thinking what to say the entire flight back, had formed it all perfectly. The problem was Mr. Wayne's penetrating gaze that threatened to make Terry lose all the words and determination to say them. He only fought it by not looking Mr. Wayne in the eye.

"Well," Terry said, "maybe she wouldn't be so biased. I mean, she figured out he spoke English without anyone helping her. All Ryuuji does is…well…trick me. I fall for everything."

When Terry finally venture to look up, Mr. Wayne was looking back at him just as disappointed and irritate as Terry had imagined he would be. "You shouldn't be backing out, Terry," said Mr. Wayne with a firmness that would refuse to let Terry drop the case for anything. "And Max is not our accomplice. She is your friend. You don't bring her into this."

"But maybe this once. I mean, I haven't been doing anything at all. I just look like an idiot."

Mr. Wayne shook his head, dismissive, but understanding. "You're just letting Ryuuji Otogi get to you. It's nothing."

"But he's already gotten to me. I can't do this."

"Yes you can. Resolve."

"That's easy for you to say. You've got all the facts. I don't even know why Otogi's old man matters."

"I've already told you, Terry. Giving you that information right now would only impede the progress of the investigation."

"Really?" asked Terry, his voice rising in frustration. "Because in case you haven't noticed, I seem pretty good at that on my own. I don't imagine how it could be any worse."

"Terry," Wayne said warningly. Terry refused to look at him. He thought he heard something like a growl from the old man. It was followed a moment later by a disappointed sigh, sort of a slow understanding on Mr. Wayne's part that was sure to belittle Terry and all he felt. Mr. Wayne would tell Terry how typical he was, how what was happening now was not important unless he learned form it. Mr. Wayne always gave such depressingly practical speeches as that.

"Terry, you've always put too much of yourself into your cases," said Mr. Wayne slowly, calmly. He was always calm, even when he was raging. He had a sort of cold, frozen inner peace about him always, "and I've let you down by allowing it to grow out of control. I'm telling you now that you need to stop putting your emotions into this. If you would learn that, you would be better. That's why I'm not giving you all the information on Ryuuji's father. You need to become less effected. I'm sorry I haven't stressed that enough with you."

"I know that already," said Terry shortly, betraying guilt because as Mr. Wayne had said, he had failed instructing Terry on controlling his emotions.

"Then learn from it."

Terry had nothing to argue back when Mr. Wayne played the I've-let-you-down card, professing not to have trained Terry enough yet. He'd already emphasised so much sending Terry to fighting classes and becoming furious with him for being rash in hopes that Terry would fail to be rash again. It didn't work. Terry wasn't a kid who did what he was told to do. He listened only to what the thought he needed to hear, then he acted to the better or worse as a result of it. So far, his arrogance had served him well enough as the Batman.

Now, however, arrogance left him crippled and unable to do his work. Mr. Wayne was right. Terry should have practised distancing himself from his work, should have been more logical and goal-oriented. Instead, Terry's lack of training exposed itself completely and begged the question if Terry would ever become a sufficient successor to Bruce Wayne.

"I'll consider it," Mr. Wayne called as Terry was halfway up the stairs. "Your friend Max. I'll consider calling her in. But, it is still your case. I won't let you give it up."

"Sure, great," said Terry unenthusiastically and continued out.

**Endnote:** Sorry for no boys kissing this chapter. I tried, but the natural resolve wasn't boys kissing. I'm terribly sorry about that.

In better news: I have a plot for this fic now. That's always a good thing, right?


	5. Chapter 5

"No. And you're just saying that because you have a crush on us."

"Oh, c'mon," said Max, pleading now because Terry hadn't taken well to direct command. "You've got to ask Ryuuji out again. If he turns you down, then again. And again. Be persistent."

"No," said Terry resolutely. "I'm not doing that. It just gives him a chance to embarrass me more. He told everyone last time."

"So? Does that scare you?"

"No, it pisses me off."

"So what? There's two options." Max held up two fingers for emphasis. "You ask him again," one finger down, "or you don't do anything," closed fist, nada, nothing. "Not doing anything keeps you from getting your job done. Remember that: _your job_. This isn't about you or how you feel."

"No, it's about Otogi's father and whatever the hell is so special about him."

"Terry," said Max, her voice trailing off disappointedly. The fact that he'd answered her with "no" every time she'd finished talking had not been promising. "What else do you have in mind?"

"I dunno," said Terry with a shrug. "I'll think of something."

"Well, you've been thinking for what? Three weeks now? Yeah, I see how well it's working for you."

Terry made a face and went back to gluing popsicle sticks together. Staying after school to work on a project with an inquisitive Max in appendage-of-Bruce-mode was not his idea of a good time, but it had been unavoidable. The home economics teacher had finally lost the rest of her mind and assigned the class to build their dream home out of exactly three thousand and five popsicle sticks. Terry was convinced it was because she was sadistic. Ryuuji had suggested in the spirit of argument that she'd recently bought stock in the company that manufactured the popsicle stick brand she'd approved for the project. But, Terry, ever learning how to cooperate with the bane of his existence, had compromised and said it was most likely they were both right, therefore squelching any need to debate the matter further. Ryuuji had responded by knocking over Terry's first successfully standing wall, and had received for it a comment on his capacity as a businessman if he was so childish.

"I don't know if I can do this," said Terry with a groan, pushing his chair back and running his hands through hair to wake himself up. Max smiled because in doing so, Terry had unwittingly smeared a great deal of glue in his hair.

"Are you talking about Ryuuji or the stick house, Terry?"

"Does it matter? Both, maybe. What can I do?"

Max reached over and pulled Terry's wrist aside to get his fingers free of his now thoroughly glued and tangled hair. "Well, right now you should go to the bathroom and wash up, because there's glue in your hair."

"Slag it," said Terry, looking at the partially dried glue over his fingertips. "This is totally unschway."

"You go. I'll clean this mess up," said Max. She'd already started grabbing handfuls of popsicle sticks and glue cartons before Terry reached the door. "I was supposed to be home a half-hour ago."

"Okay, just pile it all in my bag. I'll try to work on it tonight…or, you know, whenever."

"Sure," said Max.

Terry was surprised his head even fit under the restroom sink. He'd never washed out anything bigger than a paint cup under there. It felt strange and cramped and freezing because there was no such thing as hot water at Hamilton. The position and the temperature immediately gave him a headache, but he forced himself through. The water didn't feel all that effective. He tried soap and then regretted it because it took maybe ten minutes to wash out, which a person didn't realise when only attempting to wash one's hands with it only to have it all run off immediately like useless, soap-scented slime. Then, of course, his cell phone had to choose an appropriate time like now to ring. He sighed, scrubbed his fingers one last time over his scalp, although he was sure there was glue and soap still in it, and answered.

"Yes?"

"Quick: did you think it was Old Man Wayne calling you just now?"

"What the hell do you want, Ryuuji?"

"That's not a yes or a no."

"Are you just calling to harass me? I'm busy."

"And you think I'm not so busy as you?"

"Yeah, whatever happened to that international game manufacturing-something-marketing company you're supposed to be managing?"

"Nothing happened. I just consider myself more of creator than a maintainer type."

"So there's a board of directors or something?" asked Terry, trying to remember if there in fact was a board of directors. Mr. Wayne had told him this.

"Certainly. And I own them all. I'm kinda like Bruce Wayne, but with infinitely more sex appeal. Does that make you want to be my personal assistant?"

"Not really, no."

"Too bad for you. My last personal assistant was a blond, dark-skinned Egyptian guy named Malik. I go for ethnic."

"Too bad. I'm not very ethnic."

"Don't be stupid, Terry. You're relatively ethnic."

"How?"

"I'm Japanese from Japan. You're some kind of miscellaneously white American. So there, relatively ethnic. Think about it."

"Certainly. Won't. Now, I've got to go. I'm busy."

"Fine. I just called to tell you to tell Max that I called."

"What the hell?"

"Just tell her I called."

"What are you talking ab-"

And Ryuuji hung up, which enraged Terry endlessly.

"Ryuuji called, rambled, and told me to tell you about it. Am I being tagged or something?" asked Terry when he returned, genuinely concerned about what the hell was going on. Max groaned and began to rummage around her satchel.

"Your cell phone's on the table," said Terry, assuming that was what she must be looking for.

"No, I owe him twenty credits," said Max. "I'm making sure it's here."

"What for?"

"A stupid bet."

Terry was understandably suspicious. One thing Mr. Wayne had made absolutely certain Terry knew was not to place bets with Ryuuji Otogi. He felt cheated on Max's account, since Ryuuji rarely bet on something unless there was a tremendous chance that he could win.

"What was the bet?" Terry asked.

"It doesn't matter," said Max, avoiding the answer. "Here, give this to him when you see him." She held out the twenty credits.

"Why am I going to see him? Give away your gambling money yourself tomorrow."

"But you're going to the hotel opening tonight with Mr. Wayne, aren't you? Ryuuji will be there. It'll be a conversation opener."

Terry shook his head and laughed. "Max, with Ryuuji, you never need a conversation opener. He just leaps right in there if you want to talk to him or not." He then frowned and picked up his book bag, ignoring the sticky crunch sound it made. "And anyway, what kind of a person would I look like in front of everyone if I just strolled over and handed him twenty creds? People would say things. Horrible things."

"Just try, okay? I don't like owing money."

"And you trust me with your money?"

"Terry, I love you, but you're an idiot. Yes, I trust you with my money. If you spend it, I will kick your ass. And besides that, you simply wouldn't."

"What makes you so sure?"

"You're _Terry_, Terry." She waved the money a few more times. "Just take it. If you can't get it to him without epically defaming yourself, then don't, and you can keep it and I'll pay him back tomorrow. See, I'll even pay you."

"Fine," said Terry, caving. He reached over and took the credits from her. "Although paying me to not give him the money is not an incentive to try."

"But you will."

"Yeah. Right."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Terry had always hated wearing suits. Working for Mr. Wayne had him dressing up more in the first three months than he had in his entire life, and it did nothing to lessen the displeasure. According to Dana, he looked nice dressed up, but so did every single man alive. Terry's main concern in life was not to look nice. For one, he assumed he looked great without trying. For two, suits were constricting and no fun. They were also impossible to change out of quickly and into the Batsuit.

Terry buoyed his good feeling, however, by assuring himself that all the other men in the hotel lobby were likewise suffering. Even Ryuuji had on something appropriate for the occasion, although it may have simply been a result of him owning half the hotel. Mr. Wayne had been telling him about it, and so Terry decided that Ryuuji was crazy with money and owned a little bit of everything. Just in the past week there had been hype about him co-signing with some famous Italian chef Terry had never heard of to open a restaurant in Domino. Terry remembered it in that he had been forced to spend his weekend doing some of the most mundane Batman work of his career without Ryuuji being irritating and distracting. Technically, Ryuuji had only been in Japan for little over five hours, but the trip had taken considerably longer due to the distance and a stop in San Francisco to check in on the Black Clown offices there. He hadn't contacted Terry once the entire time, and Terry was feeling a little slighted. According to Max, Ryuuji had called her five times, and Dana had been called a whopping twelve times. Terry honestly had no idea what the two had to talk about so much.

"You know, your assistant is starting to match you, Mr. Wayne," said Ryuuji, coming upon them sneakily from behind. "You both look very excited to be here."

"Yes. Extremely excited," grumbled Mr. Wayne. "I'm going to sit down. You two should talk."

Terry could have strangled Mr. Wayne for being so blunt. Who the hell left their personal assistant to chat and lollygag during a major event without doing what they were meant to do, which was assist? It made Terry look bad. Terry wasn't even officially invited. Mr. Wayne was. Terry was the help and no higher ranking than the caterers and doormen.

"Excuse me," said Terry to Ryuuji and immediately turned to follow Mr. Wayne.

"I didn't ask you to follow me, Terry," said Mr. Wayne, taking a seat at one of the lobby benches because he said plush chairs were difficult for him to rise from. Terry sighed and shook his head.

"The last credible thing I have is my standing as your nameless personal assistant, and I'm not about to lose that to this damn case, too," said Terry angrily.

"I don't mind if people think you're a bad assistant."

"_I mind_. I'm not going to socialise while you sit in the corner."

"Do you plan on making a career of personal assisting? Why does it matter what these people think? You accomplish nothing sitting with me. Everyone knows I would usually sit here and be unsocial. They would understand. They don't think you're very good, anyway. You're too young and you've been known to run off on me before."

"But I run off, I don't stay. You should join me. Chit-chat and everything. Say your doctor told you to."

"Which doctor?"

"A back specialist in India who unfortunately is unreachable because it's three in the morning in India right now."

"You're three hours behind. It's near six in the morning in India right now. And how does socialising improve my back? Why would anyone say that?"

"Just come up with something."

"Fine," said Mr. Wayne with a resolute sigh and standing. "Don't make me regret it."

This, in a round about way, also meant Terry had no choice but to make investigative progress tonight. If Mr. Wayne was going to sacrifice his loathing of everyone in the room, Terry should easily sacrifice his qualms over whatever held him back from Ryuuji. Terry sighed just as resolutely and prepared himself.

Paxton Powers was already heading towards them as Mr. Wayne stepped into the crowd. This was usual at all events they attended. Paxton would come over to Mr. Wayne and shake his hand, since it was Wayne who owned a great deal of his company. They would be civil enough, with Mr. Wayne looking no more cantankerous than was usual for him, and Paxton smiling and laughing more than he had a right to. Paxton'd recently started making disguised comments to Terry that belittled Mr. Wayne while the old man pretended not to hear. Terry only nodded curtly. Most of his conversations with Paxton outside the Batsuit involved very little speaking on Terry's side, which was how Paxton preferred it since he considered Terry of a much lower class than himself.

"Mr. Wayne, how have you been? Good, I hope," said Paxton, beaming magnificently.

Terry kept his expression firm, least he should give away just how much he didn't like the man. That was Terry's personal assistant persona, strong, silent, and alert. When difficulties arose, of course, he found it impossible to control his reactions, and Paxton used to poke fun at his panic stricken face in what he said was good humour, but was entirely sincere. His true opinion of Terry was extremely low. Terry didn't think the man even knew his name. To Paxton, Terry was only the face behind Bruce Wayne, and because Paxton disliked Bruce Wayne, he disliked Terry as well.

"Good evening, Powers. Have you developed an interest in Gotham hotel development?"

"Well, you can say I'm invested to be here by Ryuuji Otogi," he said with the sly smile he'd inherited from his father. Just like his father, he preferred to speak elusive double meanings without explaining himself, which lead to everyone becoming confused and suspicious. That was how Paxton liked it.

"By the way. We received the Armenian shipments yesterday, the ones you were asking about, Mr. Wayne. I sent you a notice, but you didn't seem to have received it." Mr. Wayne nodded and Paxton went into a long explanation of problems with shipments since harbour security had been upped a few months before to slow illegal goods trafficking. Everything was being searched, and Wayne-Powers had been forced to revise their quarter calendar to accommodate the delays.

"Well, at least Gotham is solving some of it's own problems at last," said a woman Terry didn't know inviting herself into the conversation. She held in her hands an electronic notepad and a microphone. "What have you got to say about the raids on your company's shipments in Singapore, Mr. Powers? Has Wayne-Powers been shipping illegal arms to Southeast Asia?"

Paxton glared at the woman. "Aren't you here to ask about my opinions of Gotham's future and the tourism boom expected in the next year; you know, the local economy?"

Paxton's tone was perfectly venomous. Mr. Wayne seemed happy about it, which supported Terry's hypothesis that the old man enjoyed angry people whether or not he himself was required to anger them. It explained most of Mr. Wayne's ornery behaviour to Terry, who had never taken a class in psychology and therefore could not imagine more complicated reasons. The old man had a problem.

"Terry, they're going to start giving speeches about why we're here in a few minutes," said Mr. Wayne after Paxton had long since walked off followed closely by the reporter. Someone had come up to them then and mentioned what a terrible job the reporter was doing in not sticking to the story she'd been assigned, the opening of a new hotel. This someone, and later his wife and three friends, turned out to be the owner of the local news media syndicate. He mentioned how drab current Gotham news was and lamented it with echoes from his wife. The usual stories, those about crime and corruption and the who's, how's, and why's of the Batman, had grown cliché. The three friends could only agree completely and in turn brought over more friends to join in-friends who dawned more topics and introductions to Mr. Wayne and their own invitations of new people to the conversation circle forming. Eventually a crowd had established itself by itself entirely around Mr. Wayne so that Terry could only look on, baffled. He was still in shock when Mr. Wayne had tapped him on the arm and said that the ceremonial speeches were about to start.

"You should…check on the car," said Mr. Wayne.

Which meant Terry should go and check his hand computer to see if there had been any major disturbances in the city in the last half hour. The Batman had never been psychic about crime, just consistently well informed. Terry was supposed to update himself every half hour. The fact that Mr. Wayne was always calling him proved just how observant Terry was of this.

Terry nodded his quick, and what he assumed highly professional, affirmative and walked away from the group. He remembered what Mr. Wayne had said about people thinking he was a lazy assistant, and he averted his eyes guiltily from those who watched him leave. He left the main lobby out off a side door and headed for the exit into valet parking just incase any runs for the Batsuit were required. Safely outside and in the garage, he checked how the city had been doing without him.

The city had been doing well. Nothing he desperately needed to worry about had gone down. Maybe a few unreported muggings and vandalism had occurred in his usual patrols beyond the scope of the hand-computer, but he would never know about them. Even on a regular night he couldn't protect everyone. Mr. Wayne had yet to build an omniscient crime meter, and even if he had, Terry would have found it humanly impossible to obey. Some crimes just had to happen and there was little anyone could do about it.

That wasn't to say Terry was fine to let a few muggings or Jokerz pranks pass by uninterrupted so he could sip cocktails and chit-chat. At times he was still young and immature enough to feel a guilty when he heard about the night's crimes on the news afterwards, whether petty or major. There was always the sense that he could have, should have, done something. Mr. Wayne had assured him that such thinking was irrational and that he would learn to work around it. Slowly Terry was learning to not take Gotham's crime rate personally. The only thing that made him feel severely deficient now was his sham of an investigation on Ryuuji Otogi. Life would be perfect if only he had earth-shattering deductive insights and a stoic demeanor. But, life was not perfect, so he lacked both. More than anything, that lack hit a nerve.

The door back into the lobby turned out to be locked. This was annoying, but not a major problem since Terry could just go around to the caterer's kitchen entrance. If he had had a choice, he would have preferred to say with the caterers. They were nearer to his level of society, and so Terry felt more comfortable around them than standing silently behind Mr. Wayne in the lobby. They were smart, too, in that they didn't rush to guide or serve Terry when he entered the room. That wasn't how a personal assistant was treated in Gotham, and no matter how nicely Terry was dressed, they recognized who he was immediately. He supposed each waiter and caterer reviewed a list of names and faces before working an event, because they knew everyone immediately and how to treat them. In Terry's case he was only high enough to be respectfully referred to a Mr. McGinnis and served if he asked for it. Otherwise the staff didn't notice him.

In the lobby outside the lights were dimmed and someone unknown was talking about the history of Gotham and the business environment of the future. Terry tried to find Mr. Wayne in the crowd, but it was too dark. He gave up and headed back to the kitchen to watch TV with the off duty waiters and caterers. They accepted him cheerfully enough with the camaraderie of those in similar occupational spheres. Since Mr. Wayne was more of relic than a Gotham political power, everyone assumed Terry was simply a well-dressed care-taker who tracked medication times and drove the man to his doctor appointments. If Terry had worked for someone more influential, watching TV with the event staff would've made them uncomfortable. But, as things were, they accepted him right away. It was possible they even felt sorry for him since young people usually did not like to work for the elderly.

"What's this?" Terry asked after watching what was on and deciding he had no idea. The small woman next to him answered.

"Brian Hebert's Cajun Cook-Out. Don't worry, none of us knows what he's saying. We just like to guess."

Terry almost didn't believe her, but then a discussion broke out about the grass-looking spice used to season crawfish boils. No-one present had ever been to a crawfish boil, and so it was a mystery what Brian Hebert was saying about it. Against his initial presumptions of how useless it was to watch a show one didn't understand, Terry was soon guessing along with them. His cooking knowledge was limited, but he liked to argue over the disambiguation of the pronunciations and claiming at what moments Brian Hebert was speaking French instead of English.

"You know, it says Cajun Cook-Out, but sometimes I swear he makes Creole food…"

"What do you know, Polson?"

"Well, I lived in New Orleans for a year."

"Yes, but you were cleaning toilets."

"I still lived there."

"Yeah, he still lived there."

"Well, I think you both should shut up."

And that was what Terry listened to and sometimes intervene towards for the next half hour. He enjoyed Brian Hebert and his jovial Cajun accented littered with mysterious phrases of what turned out to be absolutely random French. One of the caterers who joined them after fifteen minutes was a Frenchwoman who picked out Brian Hebert pronunciation to the best of her ability, although she had to keep reminding everyone that she didn't exactly speak the same language.

"Hey. McGinnis, where did old Wayne run off to?"

Terry shrugged and motioned towards the double doors at the end of the room. Brian Herbet's Cajun Cook-Out had just ended and everyone without immediate work chatted happily in the afterglow.

"He's out there somewhere," said Terry, not really caring. He'd begun accepting drinks to keep his mind off how badly he'd failed his investigation this evening. No-one questioned that he was underage. Again, many felt sorry for him and his thankless work for the cantankerous Mr. Bruce Wayne. The man who was speaking to him now, someone named Martin Thomas that sounded like the name of a saint, had said he wouldn't work for Wayne for all the man's inheritance.

"Are they still giving speeches?" asked Terry blearily over one of the toxic drink extras someone had lain on the table. Apparently the physics of the drink required that it to be served at a certain heat, and when it cooled there was no longer a use for it. The heat likely distracted from the fact that it tasted deadly. The key was to be too hot to have a flavor.

"No, everyone's moved to the dinning room."

"For how long?"

"It will probably be an hour. They won't let you in. It's a sin to interrupt the dinner, sorry."

Terry shrugged, not all that concerned. He was supposed to have updated himself on Gotham's criminal vitals twice already, but yeah, he hadn't done that. Another half hour was ending and he wasn't planning to do anything for it. Nothing much happened on weekday night anyway, since less people were out. Weekday crimes were usually daytime crimes like robbing banks.

"Oh well, I'm sure they can call an ambulance if the old man strokes out or anything," Terry said, pretending to think about it. "When's the party going to end? I have school tomorrow."

"You have school tomorrow? I have finals in a week," said a woman busily slicing cheese behind him. One-upmanship was vital in the catering field, it seemed. Otherwise, no-one would have a thing to talk about. "I haven't slept in two weeks. Perhaps an hour some nights if I'm lucky."

"Don't get me started" interjected someone else further off. " I have kids crying all the time. I will be home in a few hours, and they will still be crying the same as always."

Everyone then collectively melded in their self-pity and the stress of living. A few of the young girls mentioned how life would be perfect if they could marry Paxton Powers or Ryuuji Otogi. Terry wisely neglected to offer them his opinion that Ryuuji was gay, since Ryuuji seemed to be one the they were rooting for the most. He also didn't mention his theory that Ryuuji was gay with Paxton Powers, thus crushing two dreams with one stone. There was the off chance they would banish him from the kitchen for his profanities, and then where could Terry go? It was a sin to interrupt dinner and all that. He just had to be happy the girls didn't remember that he'd kissed Ryuuji Otogi in front of the whole world. It was a little reassuring that at least two people in all of Gotham City didn't know.

Martin Thomas, however, was not a saint like his name sounded.

"I'd think twice about Ryuuji Otogi. Just ask Mr. McGinnis."

Terry suddenly decided that he needed another drink and went to find one before anyone could ask him anything. Since when did eating dinner take an entire hour? Terry was all partied-out now and wanted to go home for feel sorry for himself there like he had for the past few weeks. It was a new low when he wasn't even safe among the waiting and catering staff. Everyday, he was going to lose another safe harbor, wasn't he? What would happen when he no longer had anyplace left to go?

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooo

Dinner ended much later than Terry really thought it needed to. He managed one more crime update and found the city lacking. Just his luck, dinner ended when he was busy being so responsible, and Mr. Wayne was finally calling him and asking about bringing up the car already, he'd been waiting ten minutes. Terry had sighed wearily and felt too heavily demanded of, but he did as he was told. He drove to Wayne Manor in silence and, unbeknownst to him, to the surprise of the evening.

"You're temporarily fired," said Mr. Wayne, almost as a second thought before Terry left for the night.

"What?" asked Terry, taken aback and in several horrible ways both hurt and furious.

"I offered you as a gofer for Ryuuji Otogi. You'll still work for me, but also mostly for Otogi when I don't need you, whenever I don't need you. I mean _whenever_. I'm calling him when you're free."

Terry was outraged. He decided a frantic cascade of questions was most suitable. "No! That's not fair. I'm not going to have a life. How will I graduate high school? Why did Ryuuji even agree to that? How can you do this? Why?"

"He mentioned this evening how popular personal assistants are in Gotham, but how he would look like an idiot with one because he wouldn't know the first thing about having a personal assistant. So, I offered mine to borrow since you two already know each other."

"What?" Terry asked again, always needing to verify facts when he didn't like them the first time he heard them.

"You heard me," said Mr. Wayne. "I'm calling Ryuuji tomorrow after school so he knows I don't need you."

"My homework needs me," Terry argued back. "I still have to study."

"Maybe Ryuuji will be nice enough to let you have time for it," said Mr. Wayne with the hints of smirk. "You better work hard and behave yourself, or I'll make sure he gives you no such favors."

"You honestly don't care if I fail, do you? _Do you_?" asked Terry darkly. Mr. Wayne shrugged, making Terry realise he had no ally here.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooo

Terry was doomed, and now Ryuuji was going to make him fail high school. He should never again ask himself what more Ryuuji could humanely take from him. Apparently there was no limit, and asking about it only tempted an answer.

"I'd send you out for coffee again, but it's only been twenty minutes. I don't really drink coffee this late in the day, either."

Terry struggled with himself against the impulse to roll his eyes at Ryuuji and sigh. Mr. Wayne had told him to behave. It was one of the most difficult rules he'd ever had to follow as Batman.

"What does Mr. Wayne have you do? Get coffee all day?" asked Ryuuji in exasperation. He'd sent Terry out for coffee three times already and hadn't even finished his first cup. "You're good at it. Seven complicated orders in under fifteen minutes. That must count for skill in your profession."

Terry said nothing. That always made Ryuuji unhappy. He didn't like people not responding to him when everyone usually did. Terry was not exempt, but right now he was mentally putting himself in a better place deep down where Ryuuji Otogi didn't matter so much. The first step to finishing his investigation and saving Old-Man Otogi was to remain calm.

"I didn't give them to be mean," Ryuuji explained, "but just to give you something to do while I thought what to ask for next. But, apparently you are very good with coffee and got back before I could think of a single thing. What do you Gotham people use assistants for?"

Terry's mind when to fighting crime, but luckily his mouth did not follow.

"A gofer."

"But I don't need anything gone for," Ryuuji pointed out with a scowl at the thought. "This whole assistant thing seems like an extravagance. If you're too young or old for a wife, you spend all your money on paying an assistant. Then, you show them off to each other like purebred dogs or ponies."

"I don't remember Mr. Wayne ever "showing me off" to anyone," said Terry, unable to stop himself. The mental image Ryuuji was giving him was deeply unsettling, somewhere between being married to Mr. Wayne, and being Ace the bat-hound.

"Well, maybe my work-load is just too insignificant for an assistant," said Ryuuji, speedily coming up with another reason. "You Gothamians seem to value executives by their work loads, or by all the work their assistants do. Paxton Powers does very little most days. I've spent a great deal of time with him, and he never does anything. I don't know how his company functions."

"I'd say the same about you," said Terry.

"Didn't I already explain my position in Black Clown?"

"And because I'm from Gotham, your work load does not impress."

"Ch. I don't feel bad about it."

They sat there another long three minutes while Ryuuji looked at paperwork and twirled his pen over his thumb. Eventually, he cracked.

"How can you just stand there?" asked Ryuuji in exasperation. Terry made a mental note. The third thing that bothered Ryuuji after his clothes and being called out for speaking English was being in the room with someone not doing anything. "I can't function like this. Don't you have homework? I think we got homework in third hour today."

"Of course I have homework," said Terry, not moving. There was a paused for Ryuuji to realise he was actually going to have to give Terry permission. He seemed to find the idea incredibly stupid.

"Then what are you waiting for? Do it," Ryuuji ordered. He pointed to the door sternly. "Go in the hall and work on your homework. If you get stuck, I'll come out and help you. Or you can call Max. Or Dana. Or whoever you usually do your homework with."

Terry didn't point out that usually, he didn't even do his homework, much less with anyone else. His whole argument to Mr. Wayne about his homework needing him had be a ruse. Mr. Wayne hadn't fallen for it.

But because Ryuuji was absolutely neurotic about Terry standing around and doing nothing, Terry soon found himself out in the hall with six cups of tepid coffee and Ryuuji's math textbook, struggling over problems he hadn't even bothered to learn in the first place.

"Which question are you on?" Ryuuji asked, scuffling out of his office forty minutes later. He looked tired, which amazed Terry because he'd never seen a tired Ryuuji before. He'd just been looking over papers when Terry'd left. What was so strenuous about that?

"Number three."

"Out of twenty? You don't even sound ashamed of yourself, Terry."

"Well maybe I started at twenty and worked backwards?"

Ryuuji looked over at the page of work and grinned. Of course Terry was lying. It made Ryuuji happy to see it, though. Terry couldn't pin-point the reason. Was Ryuuji amused because Terry was being a smart ass, or was he amused because Terry was really a moron and only on question three?

"You butchered question two. That's nowhere near the right answer. You used the wrong formula," said Ryuuji. He pointed to the one before it. "You should have used the first formula. The questions are in order of the book, and these two types are in the same chapter."

Terry could only shrug. He hadn't really been focusing on his work. He'd been thinking about Ryuuji and Paxton Powers, about how that had worked. It didn't seem possible, and yet there it was.

Max, of course, had known all about it. So had Dana. And Mr. Wayne. Everyone in Gotham knew but Terry. That was how out of touch with the world his Batman duties made him. That, and the fact that the news sources that would've told him about Ryuuji and Powers were not the kind Terry typically looked into.

"Well, I've got to go to dinner now with some…people. You have to come with me and stand around so the world knows you've changed hands," said Ryuuji, stifling a yawn. He didn't look like he enjoyed the prospect of an evening out right at that moment, but he forced himself through with it for the sake of maintaining his face.

"It's probably good I have a personal assistant now who can prod me in the back when I fall asleep. Because I'm going to. The people who eat with me are all bores. Domino or Gotham, it doesn't matter."

Terry didn't say anything. Was he supposed to agree with Ryuuji or just listen? He had no idea. Switching from a speculatively subservient position to a positively subservient position in relation to Ryuuji made him unsure of most things.

"But, anyways. We'll have to get to my apartment so I can change. I got a new suit in today. As my personal assistant, you are ordered to remind me to never wear street clothes outside of school from now on. After prodding me awake, that is your primary function. Am I clear?"

"Yes, sir," said Terry unenthusiastically.

They had nothing much left to say each other after this. Ryuuji spoke a little about things Terry only half listened to, but in the end Ryuuji was too tired even for that. He confessed that for all the hype, he found Gotham boring. Nothing happened, and people were as boring in Gotham as they were anywhere else in the world. Terry made sparse comments back, mostly yes's and I see's. When they reached the apartment, Terry waited downstairs in the car for Ryuuji to get ready.

Terry had been trying to hide from himself that he'd already admitted to himself that he probably kinda "liked" Ryuuji. It was a complicated process involving a great deal of looking away and placing Paxton Powers beside Ryuuji in his mind's eye to cancel any related thoughts out. If anything was a buzz killed, it was a Powers. Terry had to remember that Ryuuji had been involved with Paxton in order to keep from remembering he'd been attracted to Ryuuji. There might still be hope that after this case that Terry could pull his questionable heterosexuality out unscathed from the smoldering ruins. The main ingredient needed until then was a great load of denial.

"I think this suit makes me look little," Ryuuji grumbled in the back seat, adjusting his sleeves and collar repeatedly. He'd tamed his hair while getting dressed, relinquishing a bit of it to the control of gravity. Terry was especially taken aback to look in his rear-view mirror and see Ryuuji wearing a hat. Hardly anyone in Gotham wore hats this century.

"It looks like a suit to me," said Terry. Actually, he hadn't seen the suit, he was just being supportive.

"It makes me look ten years old," said Ryuuji, grimacing as he looked down at himself. "I'll keep the hat, though."

Terry decided to go ahead and ask the main point on his mind. "Um. Why are you wearing a hat?"

it turned out Ryuuji had been fishing for this exact question. He couldn't wait to explain it. "I'm so glad you asked me that. See, I'm tired of Gotham fashion. I want to bring back hats. Maybe if I start, more people will follow."

"But why hats?"

"Because then I don't have to work on my hair so much. I just get lazier and lazier with age, and my hair takes a long time to sort out."

"Why can't you just stop doing your hair like you do it?" Terry asked. He'd already suspected Ryuuji's hair took horrendous amounts of time by the way Ryuuji went out of his way to protect it. "Bringing back hats is a bit of a gamble."

"You know how I feel about gambles," said Ryuuji smugly for an answer. Indeed, Terry did. Terry knew very well.

"Oh yeah," said Terry, just then remembering what Max had told him the day before. "Max gave me twenty creds for you. Here." He reached into he pocket and pulled the money out, handing it back over his shoulder. Ryuuji smirked as he took it, which angered Terry.

"By the way, I don't appreciate you making bets with my friends," he said sternly. He was pulling into the restaurant parking now, the car suddenly full of light as they drew nearer the building.

"Are you worried I will rob them?" asked Ryuuji in his usual annoying manner which Terry was getting more and more accustomed to. Maybe someday it would no longer even effect him. Then, as the Batman, Terry would have the valuable skill of dealing face-to-face with sons-of-bitches that he'd always hoped for. Sure, Terry wanted Ryuuji sometimes when his teenage impulses went to far, but that didn't make Ryuuji a better person.

"Just don't mess around like that with them. With me, it's different. I kinda deserved it after the airport…thing."

"Aw, you still feel guilty about that?"

"You don't let me forget it," said Terry, his answer having several meanings, most of which Ryuuji didn't know. It wasn't that Ryuuji actively refused to forgive him. No, it was that just being in the car driving Ryuuji all over Gotham right now was in itself a reminder of a plan gone perfectly wrong. Hell, Terry had even been chauffeuring to dinner on that fateful evening. Perhaps in some twisted taste for irony, Mr. Wayne had arranged that things would be just so in order to imprint in Terry more the important lesson not to jump too deep into cases before knowing if he could follow through to the bitter end.

"You sound so sad when you say it," said Ryuuji, relishing the words as he said them. Terry had already stopped the car, skipping the valet entirely. Ryuuji had mentioned before leaving his apartment that he wanted a moment to straighten his suit one final time. Side doors suited him just fine if an epic struggle with his clothing was involved.

"I'm not sad. It pisses me off."

"I forgot. Real men don't get sad in Gotham, they get furious. How pathetically macho."

Terry was trapped. He was stuck between admitting he could be sad and sounding like a wimp, or he could argue he was never sad and sound pathetic. He failed to realise that this had been Ryuuji's exact point.

"Huh," said Terry, blanking on anything else.

"Don't worry, Ter-ter," said Ryuuji, placing a reassuring hand on Terry's shoulder. "I believe you're a real, rough and tumble man. Although that can't mean much to you coming from a gay guy. You probably think I'm coming on to you."

Ryuuji was right. He took the thoughts right out of Terry's head before Terry could even think them. There was no chance Terry was going to admit that, though.

"Anyway, enough of this fun. I've got a boring dinner to eat and you've got to stand back and watch. Please restrain your obvious excitement."

Terry nodded and followed Ryuuji inside. In the light of the restaurant, he found that he agreed with the suit making Ryuuji look smaller. Oh well. That's what the guy got for having the narrowest shoulders of any executive in the country.

"You stay over here, I'm going to sit down," said Ryuuji, leaving Terry behind with a handful of other assistants. The other assistants nodded to Terry coolly, most of them straight-faced young women with tablets. Terry stood out among the group as the youngest and one of only three males. He also didn't own a tablet. Before the dinner started, they all took seats at outlier tea tables set up in all Gotham business dinners for the craze of personal assistance. Gotham had taken the fad to such an extreme that when you ordered a room for a party, you had to order something twice as large just to fit everyone in it.

"Why's Mr. Otogi wearing a hat?" asked the woman sharing Terry's table. Terry shrugged.

"I dunno. He wants to, I guess."

"Sorry," said the woman, tilting her glasses to give him a searching look. "What I mean is, why did you let him?"

Terry's eyebrows itched to furrow dangerously, but he fought against them. "What are you talking about?"

"Do you see anyone else here in a hat?"

"No."

"Do you know what that means?"

Terry kept his face as straight as possible. "That they all look bad in hats?"

The woman gave him her best _yeah, right_ look and turned away. Her employer was calling her forward for assistance of some sort, and she became all business in under a second. When she returned, she was back to looking at Terry like he was an idiot.

"I can't believe you let Mr. Otogi wear that suit. It swallows him."

They'd been brought coffee and water while the woman had been away, and Terry was sipping at his disinterestedly. Was the whole night going to be like this? "He wanted to wear it," said Terry. "Most Gotham style clothes make him look small."

"Not so much until now."

"And what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Stop him."

Terry cocked an eyebrow at her. "And why would I care? I'm not his wife or his tailor."

"Apparently you're not much of an assistant, either."

"You know, you're absolutely right about that," Terry said, stirring the coffee angrily. He didn't care what Mr. Wayne had told him about behaving, about being responsible and getting on Ryuuji's good graces. This woman was starting to piss him off. He looked her directly in the face and scowled enough to match her. "Listen, lady. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I have school tomorrow. What do I care about suits and hats? He can walk out to dinner in a skinny showgirl costume including-yes, even so much as including-the gigantic ostrich feather headdress and all over sequins. Trust me. I would not stop him."

The woman glared at Terry, her face still. She turned her tablet around and shoved it into his hands, pointing around the screen with a stylus.

"Look at this schedule. Do you know the work you have to put into this schedule just to be considered half competent as a personal assistant?" She switched pages to another program. "Look at this catalogue. Every piece of clothing indexed with it's size, function, and color. Each matched to it's appropriate outfit options. Each dated, annotated, and checked every season." She switched to yet another program. "And here, business transactions, histories, sound bytes, memos. All categorized not only by day month and year, but by weather, place, and purpose."

Terry stared at her a moment, not sure what to say, or if she wanted him to say anything at all. He decided it was time to start handing the tablet back.

"Oh no you don't," the woman snapped, forcing it right back on him. "What I've showed you so far is all _mine_." She shuffled through everything again as emphasis. "_My _schedule, _my _wardrobe, _my _business. It doesn't even shadow in comparison to the data I have on my employer. You have no idea. There's drink preferences, anecdotes, cribbage strategies. You can't even imagine all that's there."

Terry tried to look apologetic to appease the crazy woman. Finally, she allowed her tablet to be handed back to her, but not without several consolatory gestures and confessions that Terry was indeed a bad personal assistant. After a little while, she seemed to halfway forgive him.

"Well, I suppose you're new to this. Mr. Wayne isn't exactly demanding."

"Nope, not at all," said Terry ruefully. "Totally easy. Nothing hard about working for Mr. Wayne. Nope. A walk in the park."

"I just feel bad that Ryuuji has to put up with someone as incompetent as you," she said. "I wouldn't let him embarrass himself in a hat. I wouldn't make him take the side door into the restaurant."

Terry didn't tell her how Ryuuji had actually suggested all those things. No. By now he'd begun to notice the tell-tale signs of a Ryuuji fangirl in the woman. Inwardly, he rolled his eyes and grumbled. Why did these girls have to be so slagging everywhere so slagging all of the time?

"So, why do you work for Ryuuji?" the woman asked, slowly calming down a little more. "You still work for Mr. Wayne, don't you?"

"Yeah, Mr. Wayne's kinda lending me out. I go to school with Ryuuji, so we know each other."

"So I've heard," she said, giving him another one of her penetrating looks. Terry had no idea what she was looking for. Part of him said she just did so for effect.

"It's really an elaborate hoax to get help on my math homework," said Terry, kidding because it was all he could think to say. The woman didn't look at all amused, just irritated. Terry wondered if she was a long lost niece or granddaughter of Mr. Wayne.

"Are you sleeping with him?" she asked out of nowhere. Something about her taking a sip of water had struck her as the proper transition point for this. Unfortunately, no-one had ever warned Terry that taking a sip meant anything other than someone was thirsty, so he ended up choking and nearly drowning in his gulp coffee. The coffee was hot, and it was painful.

"NO," said Terry as strongly as he could manage without drawing the whole room into this conversation. "Just why the hell do you ask?"

"My employer wants to know."

"And what the hell kind of sick employer is that?"

"Paxton Powers."

Terry growled murderously. "Figures," he spat, shaking his head. He looked over to where Ryuuji was sitting a few feet away and noticed for the first time that Powers was right next to him.

"And why does it matter to him?" Terry finally asked, furious and morbidly curious at the same time.

"They used to be together. Don't you know that?"

"Yes."

"Does there need to be a better reason?"

Terry looked at her darkly. "_Yes_."

"Other than jealousy, you really need a better reason?" she asked, not believing him.

"Yes. I don't see why Paxton Powers would be jealous."

"No. Actually he's suspicious. He thinks that maybe Ryuuji left him for you."

"He didn't. We're not together."

"Then I'll tell Mr. Powers so."

"Couldn't he just ask Ryuuji himself?"

"That's not how this works."

Terry was about to say something. He didn't know what. Maybe something about how stupid that was, or about how unwilling he was to believe it. But, once more, Paxton's assistant was called to assist, leaving Terry alone and fuming after her. She stayed away a long time, and Terry soon gave up glaring. It was starting to give him a headache. Instead, he went to looking morosely at his coffee cup, feeling like he'd somehow become very much stuck in the plot of a bad romance novel. And then, not only was it a bad romance novel, it was a gay romance novel, and that made it all the worse.

"Aw, poor Ter-Bear. Is Paxton's assistant not playing nice with you?"

Terry looked up with shock and anger to Ryuuji who had taken the seat across from him. Ryuuji tipped his hat and laughed.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Go sit at the table before anyone thinks I'm a worse assistant than they already apparently do."

"Meh. Face it," said Ryuuji, stretching and making himself comfortable in the empty seat, "you'll never been great. You might as well give up."

"Well, my final act of competence will be to get you to go back to the table before everyone starts to notice. _Go_."

"No," said Ryuuji, instantly composing his face to something calm and in control. It was almost scary. "Terry. There are people at that table talking about dessert. Do you know what I'm saying? They want me to sit there for another course and another hour-plus because they are selfish and want dessert." He sighed dramatically and pressed his fingers between his eyes, as if pushing back a strong headache. "Then, they'll want coffee. Then they'll want drinks. Then the coffee will take effect and they'll want to keep chatting well into the night, telling me all their golf stories again and other anecdotes until I want to impale my skull on a butter knife. Do you want that to happen?"

"I don't really mind," said Terry. Ryuuji frowned at him. Ever since Terry had started talking back, Ryuuji had been hard pressed to keep Terry under control. The secret to Terry's success? Easy. He'd surrendered to his fate, and in doing so had learned talking back to Ryuuji would sometimes shut him up if Terry said the right thing. And if not, at least it could irritate Ryuuji a little back. It was probably the one thing he'd really learned about they guy so far that Mr. Wayne couldn't tell him was contrived.

"So I'm right to presume that you and Paxton's assistant have really hit things off and you would love to chat with her for another three hours?"

However much Terry hated it, Ryuuji had a point. Still.

"You can't sit here all evening as an act of protest, Ryuuji. People are starting to look for you."

"And I'm easy to find with this hat on. Isn't that convenient?"

Terry decided now was the time for straight talking that would appeal directly to Ryuuji's common sense. Hopefully, Ryuuji possessed common sense, or Terry was going out on a long, precarious limb here. "Ryuuji. They will order dessert whether you want them to or not. Go back to your seat."

"What if I just turn to them all dramatically and announce that fellows, I'm taking my dessert to go? Then, I crush-kiss you for a good minute and a half, and we leave, golden."

"Yes, assuming I would ever in this life agree to that, we could."

"So you're in?"

"Not even near it."

"Slag it, Terry. I'm tired. I hope my expert use of the vernacular can convey that to you. Or do you not know what vernacular means?"

"I know what vernacular means."

"Well, then I'll let you know I'm slagging tired. I want to slagging go home so I can slagging get some slagging sleep so I'm not so slagging exhausted when I wake up for slagging school tomorrow. Am I sla-clear, slag it?"

Terry almost burst out laughing. Almost. Ryuuji gave him a look that spelled out painfully _you suck_, and so Terry fought back anything beyond a smirk.

"You can't just leave," said Terry, motioning to those in the rest of the room. "Everyone will ask."

"How about you just lie to them all for me? No kissing involved. Just pretend I'm late for something."

"At nine o'clock at night?"

"I'm really, really late."

"Yeah right."

"Maybe my father would be calling me. He's crazy and capable of anything. No-one would question it."

"But if he's crazy, why would you even bother to take his calls? Why would he even be allowed to call?"

"You just want me to suffer, don't you?"

"Always."

Ryuuji made a face at Terry, utterly disappointed. He told Terry so much in many, many more words. By then Paxton's Power's assistant had returned and was looking down at them expectantly. Terry couldn't tell if she wanted Ryuuji to move or Terry.

"Hello Angelica," said Ryuuji after she made a small cough to get his attention. "I'm busy chastising my assistant for being uncooperative. Can you fetch me a water?"

The woman didn't seem to appreciate being told to leave and obey Ryuuji, but a part of her seemed to really want to. Terry suspected the woman would still change places with him in a heartbeat. She probably would've agree to the whole kissing ruse as well and with enthusiasm. Forget what she'd said about maintaining Ryuuji's face. If kissing him was involved, she'd probably more than willingly make the sacrifice.

Terry, however, was not a late-teen to twenty-something young woman. Ryuuji was going to have to try a lot harder, regardless of how easy Terry had come off in the first few weeks since they'd met.

"You know, it's supposed to by my job to fetch you things, not hers," said Terry, watching Power's assistant flag down a waiter and start talking with him.

"Damn. That's a good point. I could've had you trip and spill it on me, thereby forcing me to take an early retirement from the dinner. Quick, I think there's still time to stop her. Why aren't you moving?"

Terry stared unsympathetically back. "Ryuuji, if I wasn't here, what would you've done by now?" he asked. "Honestly. Would you've suffered dessert, or would you've managed to sneak out?"

Ryuuji frowned before he answered, not approving of Terry's tone. "I would've got Paxton to come up with something. Sure he would've wanted sex later as payback, but that's just because he's used to women who bargain with sex. He hasn't figured out that I'd just as much agree then as any other old time."

Terry tried desperately to delete that mental image as soon as it began to take shape. He tried not to look at Paxton sitting at the table, totally unawares of what Ryuuji was confessing about their previous relationship. He didn't want to strengthen the picture of them both together doing…whatever the hell they'd done that Terry was not going to think about any further, thank you.

Avoiding the thought, however, only made it worse.

"Aw, Ter-Bear. Was that a bit much?" asked Ryuuji, grinning at Terry who was keeping his eyes resolutely glued to the table. "What bothers you most? That it was Paxton, it was me, or that we're both men?"

"That sounds about right."

"What?" asked Ryuuji, laughing. "Look up. You're not making sense."

Terry tried. He really did. But when he saw Ryuuji, he saw Paxton, and when he saw Paxton, he saw _them_. The though scared, disgusted, and intrigued him all at once. He quickly looked back down at his coffee and started tearing open sugar packets to pour into it. Adding sugar to his coffee became the entire universe, and no-one else was allowed into it.

Ryuuji didn't even knock. Terry reached for a fifth packet of sugar not noticing Ryuuji reaching as well until he'd intertwined their fingers and grabbed hold. When Terry yanked his hand back, he brought the rest of Ryuuji with it so that the other man was leaning over the table towards him. Both glasses of water fell, the one nearest Ryuuji rolling off the edge and exploding over the floor. Terry's own glass fell into his lap and he caught it with his knees. He took it and placed it back on the table, not looking away from Ryuuji for a second. He knew what the guy was capable of.

"What do you want?" Terry growled, noticing in the back of mind that the entire room had suddenly gotten a whole lot quieter.

"I already told you what I want." said Ryuuji softly, coming closer. "Everyone's watching. Make it good."

Ryuuji started to move in for the kiss. But before his lips touched Terry's, Terry turned his face to the wall. Ryuuji ended up kissing his cheek, but only for a second. He pulled back instantly and glared.

"Why you-" Ryuuji started angrily, but Terry was already standing. He used their joined hands to pull Ryuuji along with him out of the room. There was a quick explanation about how Terry was soaking wet, which he was, and that they had to leave, sorry about dessert. Terry dragged the fuming Ryuuji to the car with him, although Ryuuji didn't even try to thank him for it. The last thing Terry saw of the diners before closing the door was Paxton's assistant holding a glass of water and glaring after him.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooo

"I can't believe you had to embarrass me like that in front of everyone, Terry," Ryuuji snapped, still furious at Terry as Terry drove them back to Ryuuji's apartment. "A kiss on the cheek? The _cheek_? What am I, your grandmother? Slagging hell. It was suppose to be bad for you, not me. You're the one who was being impossible. I didn't do anything but want to go home-but nooooo, Mr. McGinnis has to be all competent for once in his slagging life and tell me to go back to the table. I hate you now. I totally hate you."

"Good," said Terry. "I don't care."

Ryuuji fumed silently in the back seat for the next several minutes, occasionally reaching up to rub his cheek vigorously as if trying to get Terry off of it.

Terry couldn't decided how exactly he felt about Ryuuji hating him now. He'd always suspected that maybe Ryuuji should hate him. Terry had always sort of hated Ryuuji enough that it would only be fair.

Obviously the case was over for Terry now. Max would probably have to take over. Hell, did she want to be Batman? She could have that, too. Terry would just go on to live his life as a loser somewhere else far away while Mr. Wayne either gave up or went to find someone more competent. As far as Terry knew, his entire career had ended tonight.

"Why didn't you do it?" asked Ryuuji moodily. Terry couldn't pretend not to hear him. They were waiting for a light to change, so the car was relatively quiet. It was also the longest light in the history of man, so Terry was starting to grow frustrated.

"Why didn't I do what?" snarled Terry. "French you in front of a group of influential Gotham socialites when you'd set it up to make me look guilty? You know what; I have no idea. I guess I just wanted to make you angry. Yep, now that I think about it, the whole thing was just to piss you off. Personally, I can't even think of a better reason."

Ryuuji slumped down into his seat sourly, not looking at Terry, but out the window. After a few more blocks he let out a deep sigh and turned forward again.

"It wasn't about you," he said, though it sounded like it was taking a great struggle on his behalf. "What I was staging was not to get at you, you idiot. I was trying to make a point to someone else."

"Someone else as in Paxton Powers, right?" Terry couldn't help but ask.

"Yes."

"And what the hell was your point? I told his assistant we weren't together. Hell, I've told everyone we're not together, and they all think I'm easy or an asshole because of it. So, just what the hell happened to be your great point?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Wouldn't understand that you're a vindictive son-of-a-bitch who broke up with the guy and isn't happy until you've rubbed it in his face a thousand times over?" asked Terry. "I don't even like Powers, but you're just being petty."

"Oh please," groaned Ryuuji, rolling his eyes at Terry. "That's because you hate Powers, right? Ever since that hostile take-over, Wayne's been preaching the anti-Powers doctrine to anyone who will sit still for him, and you've just been soaking it in, haven't you?"

"No, everyone hates Powers" said Terry, speeding up as the light finally changed. They were almost to Ryuuji's apartment and the high probability that Ryuuji would storm of out the car and never see him again. Before then, Terry had to make his point. "They hated Wayne Corp, too. All they like is the money, and they hate the corporations for having all the money. That's how it's always been here. Only the Batman's done a thing about it, and lots of people hate him, too. You can't win in Gotham."

"No. You can't win whilst maintaining your integrity. There's a difference. But you can always find a way win any time losing is the alternative option."

Terry didn't want to ask why their argument had transformed from a kiss on the cheek to Gotham City. He didn't care. Anything he could argue, he would, if only he was arguing it with Ryuuji. He wanted to prove the guy wrong, to best him at some trifling point that didn't matter except for right now.

"Well of course, if you call that winning. And clearly you are about to tell me you lack integrity or something else that would otherwise make you a decent human being," said Terry, not leaving room for Ryuuji to defend himself from the accusation. "Then, that means you broke up with Powers because you're both so slagging perfect for each other it's like looking in the mirror."

Ryuuji sneered at this, not letting it slow him down. "And what do you have out for Paxton Powers, huh? You told me everyone hates Wayne, Powers, me, and anyone else who owns something financially substantial in Gotham City. But, you seem to hate Powers more than anyone."

"Powers is different. He deserves it. The guy's a terrible person. I can't imagine what you saw in him."

"Don't tell me you're jealous. You don't even like me."

"I'm not jealous." He paused. "And I do sort of like you."

He said it in the same hostile, defensive manner in which he'd said everything else, but the words still didn't come out the same way. Most days Terry refused to admit that he could even stand Ryuuji, and Ryuuji had taken it on face value. They both simply agreed Terry was a horny teenager who would make out with anyone who sat still and puckered their lips long enough. Terry had been happy thinking that, even if it was a little insulting to whatever stood for his willpower over his hormones.

"Excuse me?" asked Ryuuji, looking at Terry not through the mirror, but directly at him, evaluating.

Terry swallowed nervously and wished he could take it back. He couldn't decided if he was lying, being polite, or halfway sincere. Apparently neither could Ryuuji, who remained silent the last few minutes until the parking garage. Terry remembered last time they were both here this late, and he was thankful Ryuuji had not started falling asleep in the car all over again.

"Before you freak out, I'm not coming on to you," said Ryuuji, once again placing a hand on Terry's shoulder and making him think that Ryuuji was indeed coming on to him. "But maybe you want to come up and dry your clothes. Because seriously, you're soaking."

Terry expected some sort of innuendo here, some joke that only Ryuuji would ever find funny. He looked over to see it there, the smirk and the mirthfully squinted eyes, but there was nothing. Ryuuji still looked a little angry, but otherwise was quietly serious, perhaps even sincere. Terry didn't know what to make of it, but found himself agreeing and entirely confident that Ryuuji wasn't coming on to him at all.

"Sure," said Terry. "It'll only be a few minutes."

The elevator seemed to take forever climbing up to Ryuuji's floor. At the very top the walls fell away, and Terry noticed Ryuuji close his eyes. He faintly remembered hearing Ryuuji telling him something about how he hated trendy Gotham tube elevators that became open on their first and last stops. The whole sensation of losing the walls made him nervous and somewhat disoriented, so he closed his eyes. It had never occurred to Terry before then to consider someone having such a problem, but he supposed it made sense if you came from a place were the elevator walls typically kept their places.

Because the apartment was the penthouse, no-one else lived on Ryuuji's floor. The elevator opened directly into his main room, where Terry instantly felt as if he'd just walked outside. The people of Gotham did not skimp on windows, especially for the very wealthy. For some reason, windows where Gotham's single oversized contribution to the architecture world, as if the city was really anything to look at.

"Nice place. All swanked out and everything," said Terry, looking around at the minimalist expensive furniture scattered about the room like islands in a sea of carpet. Midway through the room there was a half moon depression with steps and a long couch running along it's curve. The half moon opened out into the giant three storey window and the glass double doors that lead to the balcony.

"Bathroom's over here," said Ryuuji, leading him to the door to a large bedroom that was covered all over in long rolls of plan papers spread out and weighted down with pillows and books and piles of more papers. Terry didn't believe he'd seen so much paper or so many pens in his entire life.

"Sorry, this is kind of my at-home office," said Ryuuji, kicking a path through to the bathroom door. "I'd let you use my bathroom, but I'm going to get ready for bed. The other bathrooms don't have hairdryers in them. You can leave when you're done."

Terry nodded, thanked Ryuuji, and set about removing and drying clothes in the refuge of the gigantic, empty bathroom. Everything about the apartment was oversized in the wide, spacious Gotham style. Ryuuji had made an effort to keep it all that way since he was working on integrating himself to the city. After his father died, he was planning to stay.

And no matter how much he tried, Terry still couldn't see Ryuuji as a man after his father's life. Even when Ryuuji had been mad at Terry, Terry hadn't felt like he was much danger. That was the thing about Ryuuji. He could threaten and yell all day long, but he never made anyone fear for their life. Maybe that's what made him dangerous, that no-one expected it in the end. Terry was probably just falling into a trap.

Traps, however, were something of Terry's specialty. He was always landing in them at the most inconvenient times during his investigations. If Batman skill accounted for anything, then it was saving Terry from his own impulsive self.

"Heads up. I'm bailing," said Terry, stepping up to the half-moon stair and couch depression. Ryuuji was sprawled on the floor to the left, his back against the couch front, watching television. He didn't acknowledge Terry any further than a quick shrug between changing channels.

"Well, see ya," said Terry, not sure what to say or even if he wanted a reason to stay longer. He took a few steps towards the elevator, but stopped when Ryuuji called him back.

"Hey, Terry."

"Yeah?"

"I have a question."

Oh great, this was it. Maybe Ryuuji expected some long, heartfelt profession of liking and appreciation from Terry that Terry wasn't confident he could offer. Terry was sure that even if he hadn't been lying and could stand Ryuuji, it was better to assume he didn't. If Terry got caught up in his emotions, everything went poorly. Melanie had been an exampled enough of that. Criminals didn't need compassion or care, they needed to be caught and punished appropriately.

Or maybe Ryuuji was psyching him out again. That was possible. As long as he'd known Ryuuji, Ryuuji had never given him a serious question. He'd always been trying to get Terry riled up over something stupid or the other. Why would now be any different?

"If you mother's a natural redhead and your father was a brunet, why do you have black hair?"

Terry had been right to assume it was something stupid.

"I dunno, but my brother's got black hair, too."

"But your parents where separated, right? Do you know why? Are you sure that your father was really your father?"

"Why the hell does it matter?" asked Terry, clearly sensitive on the subject of his dead father. Ryuuji might not care about his own father alive or dead, but Terry wasn't Ryuuji. To Terry a father was something important he'd lost, not some burden he'd had to keep up with. Why Ryuuji asked such questions frustrated Terry because it came off as so unyielding to the fact that other people might have had genuine father/son relationships of their own.

"It's just a question."

"You're implying my mother slept around."

"So? She's not a bad person, and your father stilled cared for you. He probably wasn't even related to you, and he still cared for you."

"I can't believe you're telling me this," said Terry angrily. "I can't believe you think I want to hear that."

"I'm saying he must've been an exemplary person."

"Because your father wasn't, and you want to make some point to me about it?"

"Not entirely," said Ryuuji, still changing stations as he spoke. The conversation just didn't matter to him did it? Probably he had found the TV boring and had to entertain himself with irritating Terry instead. Terry didn't appreciate it. "See, it's like the Jokerz. Most of the people I know don't know about them, so I save my more complicated problems for you."

"You mean the people you hang out with are all fatherless?"

"No. Paxton wasn't. Dana isn't. I'm just asking you because you seemed to mostly get along with yours. You lived with him over your mother."

"You're crazy."

"I say curious."

"You're still weird."

Ryuuji shrugged, actually agreeing to that for once. "Well, would you like to meet my father?"

"I already have."

"Don't kid yourself. You don't know the first thing about him."

"And why should I see him?"

"I dunno. Maybe it will make me look a whole lot better or something."

"And why does it matter to you what I think of you?"

"It doesn't. I just want to reach an understanding."

"You want me to agree your father's insane."

"I want you to see for yourself. Then all my annoying questions will suddenly have a reason. Like magic."

Terry scowled. He took a few steps in the direction of the elevator, but ended up making a circle. With a resigning shrug, he turned back to Ryuuji. Ryuuji wasn't looking back, but was still watching the TV as channels flitted by.

"Sure. I'll see him. When? Are you bringing him here or something?"

"We'll talk about it later. Right now I need to sleep."

"You're sitting in front of the TV."

"I can't sleep when it's quiet. I'm looking for a midnight marathon or something because this apartment is too far from traffic."

Terry grunted with feigned interest. "Sounds like you'd be great for a snorer."

"One of Paxton's downfalls was how noiselessly he slept. Didn't even move," said Ryuuji. He smiled to himself and finally looked up. Terry quickly looked away. "Although I'm sure you would've been happy not knowing that."

"Thrilled, actually."

"Why's it such a problem? And don't go on again about how you special-hate Paxton more than anyone."

Terry struggled to explain himself in a way where he didn't sound like a baby. Not very much came to mind.

"I…I just don't like the idea. I'm not gay, you know."

"Yes. I know. You just like to kiss men. It's your little hobby."

"Shut up. No, it's not."

"Sorry. You like to kiss me. That's your hobby."

"_No_, it's _not_."

"Not even a little bit?"

"No."

"Then you're masochistic, aren't you?"

Terry glared. "And what does that mean?"

"Masochistic; it means you like pain and misery."

"I know what masochistic literally means. Why do you have such little faith in my vocabulary, huh? English isn't even your first language."

"You'd be surprised how many people don't know what masochistic means," said Ryuuji. He'd found a crime drama in Japanese and settled there for the time being. As he spoke, he was preparing to stand, hopefully finally getting to bed after all of this time. "It's odd, sort of, because they all seem to know what sadistic means, and sadomasochism."

"Because those sound kinkier," said Terry indifferently. Ryuuji grinned.

"I was going to say that. You were supposed to look uncomfortable and grumble at me."

"Oops. Sorry."

Ryuuji laughed, but was distracted by the TV before he could speak. He frowned at the two cops on the crime drama silently for a few minutes while Terry was mortified with himself for only understanding the word _no _in the entire dialogue exchange. Nothing else was really happening in the drama except conversation right now. The plot seemed to have reached a standstill.

"What's going on?" asked Terry after a several more boring minutes of watching the men talk, get into their car, and then go somewhere to talk to a few more people who looked like suspects. Terry was getting tired of standing and wondering if he should just leave.

"Not much," Ryuuji admitted. "They're just saying pseudo-serious things to each other and being inquisitive a whole lot. The tall, skinny one was going on about how he wanted to see the cherry blossoms bloom this year, so he's probably not going to make it. He's got cancer killing him. It's really far-fetched how lively and about he is considering the type of cancer he says it is."

"Have you seen this before?"

"No. I watch better things."

"Like what?"

"I dunno," said Ryuuji thoughtfully, sitting down on the couch this time instead of the floor. He leaned forward and put his chin in one hand, taking up the remote in the other. "What do you like?"

"I don't watch much TV. Too busy," said Terry. He was telling the truth. It was the reason he seemed so out of touch sometimes, and also why Max was so indispensable for information.

"Same. Although for some reason, while I'm not all that into mystery or crime shows, I do like mystery or crime movies. What does that say?"

"I dunno," said Terry. He gave in to the dull aching of his legs and sat a few feet down the length of the couch from where Ryuuji was seated. Ryuuji looked over mildly interested for a moment, then turned back to the TV. "Maybe you don't like your plots contrived and rushed to fit all the action into a half hour?"

"Movies aren't exactly reality," said Ryuuji.

"But there's more exposition. And yet things resolve faster with less time wasted in pointless dialogue."

"Sometimes too fast, but I can't abandon a movie I'm already involved in."

"And real life crime would take ages to watch, even for a movie. Imagine now long you'd be trapped then."

Ryuuji shrugged, pausing at what looked suspiciously like a Japanese dubbed Sherlock Holmes television series. Terry, who'd never read much Sherlock Holmes, still didn't know what was going on.

"It doesn't seem to take very long to solve a case," said Ryuuji. "The Batman wraps up his crimes fairly quickly, sometimes in a single night."

"I'm pretty sure he's got longer cases," said Terry, who was actually extremely sure. He was looking at the longest case to date right now.

"But he doesn't seem the type for long cases, just saving people from burning buildings to reap all the glory. You know, like Superman only without all the trips to outer space."

"He gets some pretty phenomenal cases, though. It's not that he seeks out all of the glory. The glory just happens because of the newspapers," said Terry, a little more defensively than he wanted. How dare Ryuuji accuse him of being a superhero for a self-esteem boost.

"Yes, but…I think if there were a show about him, I would find it both contrived and rushed."

"No."

"Yes. He fights freaks and monsters, and how many are there of those around?"

"A surprising lot, when you think about it," said Terry. Just thinking about it himself made Terry feel beat. There were so, so many. But at least they weren't everyday. Ryuuji didn't know that. "Mostly he does boring stuff, though, only the news doesn't care because it's less interesting. Did you hear about the harbour security been upgraded to stop illegal goods trafficking? Batman investigated that and tipped them off."

"That's still a glory shot," said Ryuuji. "It was in the paper. He enjoys making the Gotham police look incompetent. I mean, he's a guy running around in a costume solving all their crimes for them."

"He does a good job. And Gotham is famous for it's corruption, especially in the police department."

"But he's insane."

"But crime rates have lowered whole percentage points."

"Of course. You can't commit a crime without the Batman being on to you. Paxton said the Batman kept tabs on him."

"Well duh. Paxton's a bad person. So was his father."

"Which was worse?"

"I'd say his father."

Ryuuji raised an eyebrow curiously. "That's interesting. Why?"

"I just do," said Terry. The subject made him uneasy, so he shielded himself by looking around and changing the subject. There was no way he could tell Ryuuji the truth about his own father's death at the bidding of Derek Powers. It would never come out right. "Anyway. Why aren't you in bed yet?"

"Pfft. You keep distracting me," said Ryuuji lazily, going back to adjusting the television's brightness and volume. He explained how annoyingly bright it was, and that it had to be loud enough to hear from his room. Terry listened, but watched the clock. He checked his cell phone for any missed call, but apparently Gotham was having a quiet night.

"I'm going to break curfew if I don't go," said Terry. It was the only excuse he had left to leave by now. He'd been hoping for a phone call or something instead, but now all he was left with was the curfew card. Ryuuji looked over and smiled a little. Terry being worried about his curfew came off as somewhat endearing. Terry didn't know why.

"I don't think anyone's going to notice," said Ryuuji.

"My mom will notice."

"Well you've already lost that battle. Might as well not worry about it."

Terry shook his head. "I can't stay here, though."

"Why not?" asked Ryuuji, leaning over and placing a hand on Terry's wrist. Terry brushed him off and scooted the other way. The last thing Terry needed was a bored Ryuuji messing with him.

"I don't want to," said Terry firmly, insisting Ryuuji stop advancing further. Ryuuji laughed when Terry moved twice as far away as Ryuuji approached him.

"You can keep scooting away, Terry, but eventually you'll run out of couch," Ryuuji pointed out. Terry looked over and noticed that Ryuuji was right. There was a good two feet left, and then it was steps.

"I've gotta bail," said Terry, moving to stand. He was stopped by Ryuuji who sprang forward and straddled his lap, pushing him back into his seat. He kissed Terry down, but not so violently or intensely as Terry had expected after such an attack. When Ryuuji was done, Terry gave him a rather romance-crushing annoyed look.

"Aren't you tired?"

"Yes, but I drank too much coffee today, so I won't sleep anyway. I'll feel better if I'm distracted."

"I'm not staying up all night for you," said Terry, trying to push Ryuuji off of him. Ryuuji grabbed on tighter, leaning in closer against Terry until his lips brushed Terry's ear lightly.

"Aw. Aren't you at least a little interested in what Paxton and I were doing?"

Every inch of Terry froze at the thought. Slagging hell. Taking advantage of the effect of his words, Ryuuji moved Terry's arms aside and began sneaking his hands underneath Terry's jacket, almost removing it before Terry remembered to start shoving him away again. Terry struggled to slip his arms free of the final few inches of sleeves as Ryuuji started to kiss him again several times in a row, each one growing rapidly more forceful than the one before it.

It would be easy to throw Ryuuji off, to storm to the elevator, to leave and hand the case over to Max immediately upon arrival to the sane outside world. In an ideal scenario Terry would do exactly that. Hell, in an ideal scenario, he already would have. But, as it were, he was kissing Ryuuji, touching Ryuuji, doing every slagging thing he knew he probably shouldn't but secretly suspected was ultimately expected of him by everyone.

A large, rational, and mainly just plain sleepy part of Terry wanted to stop. Why wasn't he in control of that? He even helped-actually _helped_-Ryuuji undo his tie. Mr. Wayne had insisted Terry wear a suit when working for Ryuuji, something about it being more professional. Ryuuji did not seem to approve and made an irritated face at the buttons he was faced with. Terry was a little hopeful that buttons were enough to keep them at this stage and away from anything Paxton and Ryuuji had experienced together.

Terry was tremendously wrong, though. Ryuuji simply resigned and started with the cuffs. There was no holding him back. If Terry had give him the okay, he probably would've just ripped the shirt apart, cheap, sweaty porno style, leaving Terry to lament the lost of buttons later at a less pressing time.

"I thought you said you totally hate me," said Terry distractedly.

"I thought you said you sorta liked me," Ryuuji snapped back, not all that interested in talking for once in the entire time Terry had known him. He'd already begun unbuttoning the first few buttons of Terry's shirt and was ushering him to lie down on the couch to make things, as he put it, "easier in a few minutes."

Terry tried desperately not to think about what that meant.

He kissed Ryuuji harder when Ryuuji brought himself up to Terry's face again, only halfway through the shirt and swearing at it in a mix of languages that made Terry laugh. What could he say? It was a brand new shirt. He pressed Ryuuji to him closely, so much that Ryuuji had to pause on the buttons for a moment and bring his hands up to Terry's face. Fingers traced his cheekbones idly, waiting until Terry deepened the kiss and tasted Ryuuji's mouth for the second, more sincere time. He'd been too apprehensive to before, too repulse by the idea of his tongue in another man's mouth. Now, it really didn't seem so important.

Ryuuji had finally come out victorious in his war against the buttons of Terry's shirt and began pushing it off of Terry's shoulders. He broke the kiss to make a victory cheer, then sat back to survey what his hard work had revealed. Suddenly he was laughing, which both embarrassed and annoyed Terry who wasn't sure what the hell was so funny.

"Wow, you're in shaaaape," said Ryuuji, running a hand up Terry's torso and making Terry shudder. "And here I am, a skinny Asian kid who doesn't work out. You've got me so self-conscious now."

Terry grinned, but a part of him wasn't so amused. It was the part that knew where this was heading, that swore to him he didn't want it. Sure, kissing was fun. Sure, shirtless was fun. But what came after all of that, and was he prepared to go so far all at once with a guy?

Another part of him begged the question, why the hell not?

That part maybe terrified him.

"Get off me, Ryuuji," said Terry, finally gaining control of himself once he'd adequately scared himself shitless. Terry always believed he operated best under a feeling of terror. Ryuuji frowned at him.

"What, cold feet, Terry?"

"I don't want this."

"That's hard to tell."

"I'm serious," said Terry darkly. "I've got to go."

"What is this? You tease like a vain little girl and then run on back home early? I can't believe you're a senior boy in high school, Terry," said Ryuuji with an exaggerated pout. Terry was trying to sit up, but Ryuuji held him most of the way down. "Or do you follow the third date rule?"

"Third date?"

"Sex only after the third date. Do you need to get to_ know _me first?"

"Well, to be fair, I did admit to wanting to know you earlier."

Ryuuji rolled his eyes at this, his right hand still tracing spirals into Terry's torso, waiting for this moment to pass as he assumed it should. "Well then, here's a crash course: I like Chinese food, my men tall and dark haired, and at this very moment I want very much to do very dirty things with you. I dislike my father, most women, and not being able at this very moment to very much do very dirty things with you. Happy now? Can we proceed?"

"No," said Terry, trying again to sit up.

"Dammit, Terry! Why do you have to be so sentimental about this? It's because of your angry, pompous little I'm not gay thing, right?"

"That might have something to do with it."

"Get over it," said Ryuuji harshly, leaning down into Terry to jab him in the chest with his finger on every other word. "You made out with me, embarrassed yourself by asking me on a date, and then ruined your whole bubble world to be around me. Don't pretend I don't notice, you idiot. For all intents and purposes, you're just as gay as Paxton, who, like you, apparently isn't gay."

"What?"

"Yep, he's just an incredibly horny rich guy. Lucky for him, I'll take that."

"Then take yourself and let me go home."

"Oh f-k you."

"F-k yourself and get off me."

It wasn't exactly crushing wit, but it angered Ryuuji more. Ryuuji glared at Terry for a moment, but Terry wasn't bothering to look back. By now Terry was laying patiently with his hands crossed over his stomach, waiting for Ryuuji to move or say something else.

"You're an idiot, you know that? We could've had a great time," said Ryuuji. He wore a look of frustration, not sure what he was going to do about Terry like this. Terry, on the other hand, felt immensely powerful. Ryuuji was almost pinning for him, and for Terry it was selfishness embodied that he savored it.

"Do I need to be dating you? Is that it?" asked Ryuuji, his tone mocking Terry for again being sentimental. To Terry's surprise, he found himself nodding.

"Yes," said Terry, although he wasn't sure he meant it. He wasn't sure he ever wanted to talk to Ryuuji again. "I come off pretty easy, but I'm not that easy."

"I think Dana infiltrated your consciousness and strangled your desire for sex," Ryuuji growled. Terry laughed, but he didn't like the comment at all. Instead he sat there, looking up at Ryuuji with a smile he didn't feel. In his head, Terry felt everything had jumbled together. A part of him remained highly aware that Ryuuji was on top of him, and that part wanted to proceed without all this conversation. But, a saner and more persuasive side held Terry back.

It was hard to hold back when Ryuuji assaulted him with another kiss, trying to pull Terry once more into the mood of moments before. Terry returned the kiss only enough, causing Ryuuji to pull back and give up, frowning at him.

"Is it really that important to you that we're dating? I thought it'd just embarrass you, honestly. You don't seem the type," said Ryuuji tiredly, proving he still knew a lot more about Terry than Terry liked to give him credit for.

"In this case," said Terry, ignoring the double meaning, "it does matter."

Ryuuji sighed and thought for a moment. Eventually, he surrendered and slid down to the floor, letting Terry rise at last.

"Fine, you win. Where and when, Saint Terence?"


End file.
